I have a confession. I really like bananas (they’re a healthy, portable snack and I go crazy over banana-chocolate cake), but I feel guilty about the environmental and social impacts.

Bananas are grown with some of the highest pesticide levels of any tropical crop. Normally we don’t worry about it because we don’t eat the contaminated peel, but the pesticides leach into soil and kill surrounding wildlife. Also, bananas are grown in Latin America (imagine the fuel costs and how unripe they have to be to ship properly), where workers are denied fair wages and health care. Before you throw your hands up in frustration, please buy organic and fair-trade bananas (sparingly).  Yes they’re more expensive, but that’s how much they’re supposed to cost. And then go ahead and make these banana brownies.

I first got the idea for these when I went to a demo and ate brownies with grilled bananas. So gooey. So good. I decided to make it a one-pan affair by baking the bananas and brownies together. The brownies are an old standby. They’re like the box-mix kind, with their chewy bite and crackly, paper-thin crust, but better. They also happen to be low-fat. The only brownie I like more has three sticks of butter and 3/4 pound of chocolate, so you can’t really compare. The topping has a couple tablespoons of butter or optionally none at all, making the whole thing healthier than expected.

Personally I think these need nuts to break up the gooey texture, but a lot of people who like fudgy brownies liked these as is. If you’re not a fudgy fan, I suggest adding a handful of toasted walnuts or cocoa nibs (toss with a teaspoon of flour, so they don’t sink to the bottom) during the last stage of mixing.

Banana Upside-Down Brownies

Topping recipe adapted from David Lebovitz; brownies adapted from Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts by Alice Medrich
16 servings

For the topping:
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons (100 g) packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons water or butter; cubed, at room temperature
3-4 ripe medium bananas (organic and fair-trade please)
A few drops of lemon juice

For the brownies:
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour (112 g)
1/2 cup plus 1/2 tablespoon unsweetened dutch process cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon instant espresso or coffee powder, dissolved in 1 teaspoon hot water
Optional: 1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts or 1/4 cup cocoa nibs, tossed with a teaspoon or two of flour

1. To make the topping, place the brown sugar and water or butter in an 8×8″ metal cake pan. Place the pan directly on the stove and warm over low heat, stirring until the sugar is the texture of wet sand. If using water, simmer for about 45 seconds. If using butter, stir just until the sugar is moist and bubbling, then remove from heat. (It won’t be completely smooth, and there may be a few bare spots.) Let cool to room temperature.
2. Peel and slice the bananas in 1/4-inch (1 cm) slices. Arrange them, slightly overlapping, over the melted brown sugar. Sprinkle with a few drops of lemon juice.
3. Position the rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat it to 350°F.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
5. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Off the heat, stir in the sugar until combined (texture will remain sandy). Add the eggs, vanilla, and dissolved espresso powder. Beat with a wooden spoon about 40 strokes, scraping the sides of the pan as necessary. Add the dry ingredients and the walnuts/nibs (if using) and beat for another 40 strokes, or just until completely mixed.
6. Scrape the mixture into the pan and spread evenly. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out a little gooey. Note: the brownie recipe calls for 20-25 minutes, but mine were nowhere near done then. I have a temperamental oven, so check the brownies at 20 minutes  and every 5 minutes after that, and be prepared to bake for up to 40.
7. Cool for about 20 minutes, then run a knife along the edges of the brownies to help it release from the pan. Invert the brownies onto a serving platter. When completely cool, cut into 16 pieces. If keeping for more than one day, store the leftovers in the fridge.

By now I’ve made cakes from avocado, beets, and potatoes, so a dessert with zucchini sounds relatively ordinary. But if we forgo zucchini bread, then we can have some fun.

I found a recipe for zucchini blondies after seeing a surplus of the squash at my market. (Since when is zucchini “in season” in the spring? Should I be worried?) It sounded strange, but I had a lot of zucchini, and it gets boring and mushy when you sauté it the traditional way.

This recipe was surprisingly good (believe me, I don’t like everything I make). Because the zucchini adds moistness, these blondies are extra gooey and virtually impossible to over bake. Just be sure to chop the zucchini very small, as the recipe instructs. Otherwise, the blondies will seem overly vegetal. For you fainthearted, I’m sure you could substitute bananas, which would go well with the butterscotch-like batter.

Zucchini Blondies

Adapted from Smith & Hawken: The Gardeners’ Community Cookbook by Victoria Wise

Oil or soft butter, for greasing the baking pan
5 tablespoons butter, melted with 1 tablespoon water
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 medium zucchini, peeled and chopped into 1/4-inch pieces (6 ounces)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans
1/3 cup chocolate or butterscotch chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F with a rack in the middle. Lightly grease a 9-inch square baking pan.

Pour the melted butter into a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar and mix well. Add the egg and vanilla, and beat until blended.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Add to the butter mixture. When almost combined, stir in the zucchini and nuts to make a stiff batter.

Spread the batter in the baking pan and sprinkle the chocolate chips on top. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean with a little batter clinging.

Remove from the oven, and when cool, and slice into 16  squares. Serve warm or at room temperature. Keeps, covered, for 3 days at room temperature. Or wrap each piece individually and freeze for longer.

Vegetables in Dessert:
Heirloom Tomato Cake, Chocolate-Potato Cake, Bean Brownies, Classic Carrot Cake, Potato-Chip Cookies, and more

The first time I tried avocado in a dessert, it was in a milkshake at an eclectic restaurant. I loved avocados; I loved sugar. Why not? Then my cousin pointed out, “Ew! You’re going to drink pure fat!” By the time the shake came, I could only muster a sip. My mom, ever the good sport, finished it for me.

Ten or so years later, I encountered an avocado Popsicle at the New Orleans farmers market. By now I knew that avocados were common in Southeast Asian and Latin American desserts and wasn’t grossed out. This Popsicle was like ice cream on a stick; it was refreshing on that blistering day.

When my aunt recently visited me, she brought along gifts: Harbor Sweets chocolate, Trader Joe’s freeze-dried mangosteens, lettuce and avocados. (She was just being practical with the veggies.) That avocado was getting softer by the day, and like all surplus food, I had to turn it into dessert. I almost went with avocado pancakes, but they’re savory. So I went with this tender cake from Accidental Hedonist. As Kate says, “Done correctly, it’s a cake that can sit with pride next to your zucchini bread or pumpkin cake.” It doesn’t taste gross, but it’s faintly vegetal in a good way, like carrot cake.

It’s so good that I might substitute puréed avocado for butter in other recipes. It’s kind of healthy too: avocado’s high in omega 3s, vitamin E and fiber. If you’re worried that people will be put off by the green color, just tell them you made a pistachio cake, which sounds far fancier. Trust me, it’s worth saving your avocados for.

Recipe is at Accidental Hedonist
You can skip the walnuts and dried fruit if you wish. To make 20 cupcakes, bake for about 20 min. in a 350° F oven.

Related links:
More Vegetables in Dessert: Heirloom Tomato Cake, Chocolate-Potato Cake, Bean Brownies, Classic Carrot Cake and Potato-Chip Cookies
Gourmet’s Test Kitchen Challenge: Avocado Marshmallows v. Avocado Crème Brûlée
More on my Trip to New Orleans and the Relief Work That We Did

The idea hit me like a stroke of genius.  If everything tastes better with bacon, surely dessert does too.  A handful of them get it right, like Roni-Sue’s bacon buttercrunch.  (Save yourself from Vosges’ bacon bar though.)  But I wanted to try something new: “double” bacon cookies.

A couple years ago, The NY Times ran a recipe for bacon-dripping cookies, but there was no bacon in them.  Other recipes have bacon bits, but they make no mention of drippings.  Why oh why would you waste pork fat?

The draw of bacon cookies is the balance of sweet and salty, and I know of no other recipe that epitomizes the two like olive shortbread.  I love them so much that I used them as a base for these experimental cookies.  Of course I substituted the olives with crumbled bacon, and instead of butter, I used the drippings.  After all that work, I expected to hit the jackpot.  But my flash of genius was more like a flash in the pan.  The cookies were nauseatingly rich.  The texture was literally like sand; they wouldn’t hold together.  Maybe I didn’t render enough fat (more on that later), or maybe you can’t make all-lard cookies.  I think the bacon-and-lard idea is better suited for savory crackers.  Not so avant-garde, I know.

Why did I even bother sharing this idea then?  Because I kick myself when someone beats me to it.  Like the time I made the crispiest pizza without a wood-fired oven or a pizza stone.  A cast iron skillet did the trick.  By the time I made it known, it was too late: Heston Blumenthal was credited with the idea.  Never mind that I did it more than a year before he documented it in his book, In Search of Perfection.  See what procrastination does?

Or sometimes I do start a popular idea, and it gets passed down so much that people forget the source.  More than three years ago, I created a knock-off recipe for Nutella.  One that had cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate, just like Nutella itself.  At the time, I couldn’t find any such recipes on the Internet, so I shared it here.  This Feb., the L.A. Times ran a similar recipe, citing the same book that I did.  Heck, even the title was similar.  “Nuts for Nutella” vs. “Nutty for Nutella.”  Perhaps I’m paranoid, but in the past people have copied my recipe word for word and passed it off as their own.

Let this serve as a marker.  If three months or three years from now, someone comes up with a great bacon shortbread recipe, perhaps a seed was planted here.   For those who are wondering, here’s the recipe I used.  I didn’t like it though.  Sorry, no pictures, as I only had a pile of crumbs.  These would probably be better with butter instead of drippings.  Too lazy to try it again though.

P.S. – this dough is also good with seaweed or furikake.

Bacon Shortbread Cookies

Adapted from Susan Herrmann Loomis and The Traveler’s Lunchbox
Yield: about 34 cookies

1 to 1 1/2 lbs uncooked bacon, to yield 1/2 cup drippings and 1/2 cup bacon bits
3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted or 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, whizzed in a food processor until fine
1 Tablespoon neutral-flavored oil (Don’t get smart and try olive oil, peanut oil, etc.  Your tastebuds will go into shock)
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

Cook the bacon.  The cleanest, unfussiest way is to bake it at 400° F in a large foil-lined baking sheet for about 20 min.  Turn the bacon over half way through cooking.  Don’t put the bacon on racks.  The little grates are a pain to clean.  Also, don’t be like me and bake it at 200° F for 3 hours, no matter how good it sounds.  The fat won’t render all the way.

Reserve 1/2 cup of bacon fat and let it cool to room temperature.  Crumble 1/2 a cup of bacon, and save the rest.  It keeps for a long time in the freezer.

Preheat oven to 350° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or foil.

In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the bacon fat until it is soft. Mix in the sugar until blended, then drizzle in the oil and mix until combined. Add the flour and the salt, and mix gently but thoroughly until the dough is smooth, then add the bacon bits and mix until they are thoroughly incorporated into the dough.

With your hands, press the dough into the pan until it is 1/4-inch thick. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, and up to 24 hours. Score the dough into rectangles with a knife.

Bake until the cookies are golden, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately cut the cookies while they are still hot. Cool on wire racks.

If you find that the middle pieces are still doughy, re-bake them in a preheated 300° F oven for about 10 minutes.

Goji berries used to be one the best-kept secrets in Chinese herbal medicine.  Oddly enough, they’re usually used in savory dishes; my mom drops a handful into chicken or abalone soup. You can also make fruit “tea” by steeping dried gojis, Asian red dates, and logans in hot water.  As the fruits reconstitute, they also infuse the water with their sweetness.

Now that gojis have gone mainstream in energy bars, chocolate, and cereal, I look at them not so much as medicine, but as dessert.  Since they’re like a cross between raisins and cranberries (but with a slight medicinal aftertaste), why not put them in oatmeal cookies?  And while I’m on that route, why not replace cinnamon with Chinese five-spice powder (a mixture of star anise, fennel, cinnamon, Szechuan pepper, and cloves)?

Since I’m not fond of fennel and anise, I made a back-up batch of six-spice cookies (with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and cayenne), just in case I couldn’t stomach the five-spice powder.

For the base cookie dough, I used a recipe from Nick Malgieri’s Perfect Light Desserts (thanks to David Lebovitz for the find).  As promised, they were chewy but not tough, cakey, or soggy (things that characterize most low-fat cookies).  They obviously don’t taste as buttery as traditional cookies, but no one will know they’re “healthy.”  BTW, my favorite low-fat oatmeal cookies are the florentines from Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts by Alice Medrich, but that’s another post.  Now those taste buttery.

In the end, the six-spice cookies were good, but the five-spice ones were better.  The latter reminded me of my childhood: dim sum with my grandparents and my mom’s home cooking.  They had an earthy taste, and five-spice powder works so well in desserts that I’m going to keep substituting it for cinnamon.  It’s really good in coffee fruitcake, for example.  Next experiment?  My morning oatmeal.

The six-spice cookies had a little bit of heat, and I like that concept too.  The point isn’t to make dessert taste like hot sauce, but to give your mouth a little sensation.  I have an idea for another cayenne pepper dessert (not with chocolate though; that combination’s been played out enough).  Stay tuned for that, if I get a chance to bake more. 

P.S. I’m on Twitter.  Come find me at twitter.com/sugoodsweets.  It is Ruth Reichl’s fault.  I saw her there and realized how fun it is.

Asian Oatmeal Cookies

If the Chinese made oatmeal raisin cookies, these would be it.  Goji berries have a sweet-tart flavor akin to raisins and cranberries, and they call out for Asian spices—in this case, Chinese five-spice powder.

For the best results, buy gojis from a reputable natural-foods store.  They can cost $20/lb, which is sticker shock compared to the $6-lb bag in Chinese supermarkets, but we know better than to trust Chinese ingredients.  I’ve heard horror stories of Chinese gojis that were dyed red.  Besides, the better the berries, the more sweet (and less medicinal) they will taste.  If you can’t find gojis, raisins or cranberries will work fine.

About 24 cookies

Adapted from Nick Malgieri’s Perfect Light Desserts: Fabulous Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and More Made with Real Butter, Sugar, Flour, and Eggs

1 cup flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups rolled oats (not instant)
1/2 cup goji berries

2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper, greased foil, or silicone mats

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and set the rack on the lower and upper thirds of the oven.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and five-spice powder.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and granulated sugar until smooth. Mix in the brown sugar, then the egg, applesauce, and vanilla.

4. Stir in the dry ingredients, then the oats and raisins.

5. Drop the batter by rounded teaspoons 2-inches apart on the baking sheets and use a fork to gently flatten the dough.

6. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they “look dull on the surface but are moist and soft.” Rotate baking sheets during baking for even heating.

Storage: Once cool, store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.

Six-Spice Variation: Substitute the five-spice powder with 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves, plus a big pinch of cloves and cayenne pepper.

Tip: Dough can be refrigerated for several hours before baking, which should make the cookies even better.