More Plantains

Yes, more plantains! I once feared them now cannot get enough of them. This time I decided to mix it up a bit. They are delicious sauteed. They are wonderful with rice. But this time, yeah I'm going a little kooky with the plantain. Last year when I was at the Fabulous Food Show, I saw Tyler Florence make mashed sweet potatoes with bananas. I'm sure when Tyler makes it, it's delish, but it sounded a little off to me. I just can't wrap my hairdo around that flavor combination. So, why not try it with plantains!?

I didn't follow Tyler's recipe, I just winged it with stuff I had in the house. I started with two decent sized sweet potatoes, stabbed with a fork a few times and placed them on a cookie sheet.


Then I took my plantains, cut them in half and peeled them. I had three plantains. What else, what else? I looked around the kitchen and in the fridge and found one green apple so I washed, cored and cut it into quarters. Then wrapped the plantains and apple in foil and put it on the cookie sheet with the potatoes.


After about 40-50 minutes in a 350 degree oven, the potatoes were nicely soft and the plantains and apple were roasty toasty soft as well.


I then peeled off the peel of the sweet potatoes and the apple. You can probably leave the apple skin on if you like for some added texture, but I opted to take it off. Then dumped them all in a bowl. I added stuff you would add to regular mashed sweet potatoes... about 2 Tablespoons of butter (I'd add more but I'm trying to watch myself with that kind of thing), a teaspoon of cinnamon, and about a quarter of a cup of brown sugar.


Mash, mash, mash away!!!


It turned out really delicious! I served it with some of our leftover Easter ham. And just to clarify, this was several weeks ago. I don't still have Easter ham! :)

Monkey Bread Revisited

Last Easter I made Monkey Bread and everyone (especially Nick) went insane for it. It was really good, but it was made with canned biscuits and that kind of bothered me. I like to try and find the hard way to do something, not the easy way. I prefer things from scratch whenever possible. So as I was looking through some magazines my mom gave me, I found a from scratch recipe for Monkey Bread in an old issue of Cook's Country. I didn't even have to search one out! It just fell right into my lap.

Start out by mixing 1 cup of warmed milk, 1/3 cup of warmed water, 2 Tablespoons of unsalted butter, melted, 1/4 cup granulated sugar and 1 package rapid rise yeast together.



In a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, mix together 3 1/4 cups all purpose flour and 2 teaspoons of salt.




With the mixer on low, slowly add the milk mixture to the flour mixture.



Once the dough comes together, increase the speed to medium and mix until the dough is smooth and shiny, about 6-7 minutes.



Take the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly to form into a ball. Put the dough ball into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap and a towel and let rise in a warm dry place until the dough doubles in size. That should take about 50-60 minutes.

While the dough is rising, butter a Bundt pan and set aside. Then mix together in another bowl, 1 cup packed light brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, and although it's not in the recipe, I added a cup of chopped walnuts.




It's time to set up a little assembly line. You will need your brown sugar mixture, a stick of melted unsalted butter and an 8 oz. block of cream cheese cut into cubes. Then, once the dough has risen, remove it from the bowl and gently pat it out into about an 8 inch square. Then using a bench scraper or a knife, cut the dough into about 64 pieces.



You don't necessarily need the same amount of cream cheese and dough. You can roll some of the dough without the cream cheese middle. Then it's like a little prize when someone gets one with a cream cheese filling.

In your buttered Bundt pan, sprinkle some of the brown sugar mixture around the bottom and sides. Then take your little dough square, place a little chunk of cream cheese in the middle.



Roll the dough into a ball.


Dip and roll in melted butter then start to line them in the Bundt pan.




The original recipe says to roll the ball in the melted butter then roll it in the brown sugar mixture. I didn't do it that way, but by all means, feel free to if you want. I prefer to line up the dough balls in the pan in one layer and then sprinkle the sugar mixture over it. Repeat this until all the dough is gone. It's less messy on your hands and has pretty much the same result.



Once you have finished all the dough, sprinkle whatever sugar/nut mixture you have left on top and then cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise in the Bundt pan for about 50-60 minutes, or until the dough rises to the top of the pan.



Now it is finally time to bake! Be sure to take the plastic wrap off and put the Bundt pan on a cookie sheet to avoid a mess of cinnamon sugar in the bottom of your oven. Bake at 350 for 30 to 35 minutes or until brown and bubbly. Remove from the oven and let set for 5 minutes. Then turn out onto a serving plate. Serve warm and watch it disappear!

Monkey or Gorilla...Bear, Lion or Wildebeest Bread whatever it's called, it's good!!!

I love Paula Deen. I think she's a hoot and a half. Except for maybe on her Paula's Party show where's she's, as I like to say, too Paula. And quite honestly, I don't make her recipes very often. I just don't cook that way. But there are those times when you just have to try it. This is one of those times. I've heard it called Monkey Bread, but Paula calls hers Gorilla Bread. It's become an Easter staple in our house over the years. And it is SO good!

Start by spraying a bundt pan with non-stick spray and then putting about half a cup of nuts in the bottom of the pan (you will need a cup and a half total, of nuts, chopped). The recipe says walnuts, I used pecans.




In a small bowl, mix 1/2 cup of granulated sugar with 3 teaspoons (or 1 Tablespoon) of cinnamon. And set aside.




Take one stick of butter (I always always use unsalted for any kind of baking) and 1 cup of brown sugar and heat together in a saucepan, stirring until butter is just melted. Set aside.




Next you will need one 8 oz. package of cream cheese, cut into small cubes. And set aside. We're kind of creating a little assembly line here.






Now, it's time to get down to it and assemble this wackadoo bread thing. This recipe uses refrigerated biscuits. The recipe calls for 2 packages of 10 biscuits, but I used 2 packages of 8 Grands biscuits and cut each in half. Take a biscuit and spread it out a little with your fingers and then sprinkle some of the cinnamon sugar mixture over the top. Then place one of the cream cheese cubes in the middle.




Then roll it up into a ball. Try and seal that cream cheese in there!




Then you want to layer them over the nuts in the bundt pan. First in one layer and then pour half of the butter/brown sugar mixture over the top of them. And then more nuts!! OMG, I'm going into cinnamon sugar ecstasy right now and I've already eaten it!!




Repeat this process until all the biscuits are filled and placed inside the pan. Make sure you have some of the butter/brown sugar mixture and nuts saved for the top. Oh... oh my. I wish I had some leftover!





Bake at 350 for about 25-30 minutes. And when done, let cool for about 5 minutes before you invert it onto a platter. Make sure you don't let it cool in the pan too long or the brown sugar/butter will end up getting too sticky too release from the pan. It will still be warm though and may collapse a little onto itself. But it doesn't matter! This is finger food anyway. It's fun to pull apart and eat those delectable little pillows of love.

And of course, I had to take to even another level. I had cream cheese frosting leftover from a batch of Red Velvet Cupcakes I made for a customer for Easter, so I put that on the side in a bowl so when you pull off one of these nutty cinnamon delights, you could dip it in even more cream cheese! Which worked out well, because you'll find that the little blocks of cream cheese do kind of bake into the biscuit some.





Gorilla Bread
Recipe courtesy Paula Deen


1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese
2 (12-ounce) cans refrigerated biscuits (10 count)
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Spray a bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray. Mix the granulated sugar and cinnamon. In a saucepan, melt the butter and brown sugar over low heat, stirring well; set aside. Cut the cream cheese into 20 equal cubes. Press the biscuits out with your fingers and sprinkle each with 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon sugar. Place a cube of cream cheese in the center of each biscuit, wrapping and sealing the dough around the cream cheese. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the nuts into the bottom of the bundt pan. Place half of the prepared biscuits in the pan. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, pour half of the melted butter mixture over the biscuits, and sprinkle on 1/2 cup of nuts. Layer the remaining biscuits on top, sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon sugar, pour the remaining butter mixture over the biscuits, and sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup of nuts. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes. Place a plate on top and invert.