Blue Cayenne

Ever considered making your smoothies in your washing machine?

I didn’t think so.

Apparently others have. ABP, a Hindi news station in India, has reported instances where Indian smoothies, lassis, have been bulk produced in washing machines. HSBC , the British multinational banking and financial services holding company, even distributed a cute advertisement about the practice. You can see it here:  HBSC Lassi Washing Machines.

So, why am I bringing this up? Smoothies have been on my mind lately and I’ve been enjoying a lot of them as breakfast drinks.  I recently came across a recipe for Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt and I couldn’t wait to give that recipe a try.

A lassi, if you are unfamiliar with the drink, is an Indian smoothie made with dahi (yogurt) and water.  Indian sources are hazy about the ancient origins of the drink but not hesitant to tout its virtues. Lassi is claimed to have Ayurvedic healing properties, calming the mind and healing the body. Devotees credit the probiotic drink with everything from cooling you down on a hot day to aiding the digestion of heavy food.

The drink is a blank, creamy canvas for all sorts of variations including spice-laced lassis, sugared ones, and fruit-based ones like mango lassis. Sometimes there are other additives, too. Anthony Bourdain, ever the food adventurer, was able to seek out a lassi (a bhang lassi) laced with cannabis in Rajhastan. He recorded the experience on his program, No Reservations, and joked that he wanted a “wake up in the morning…what the hell happened?…where is my passport? these aren’t my clothes” kind of experience. Funny tragic man.

Here is the recipe for Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt. It is as delicious as it is beautiful.

Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt

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Ingredients

• 3 ripe medium-size mangoes (peeled and diced)
• 1 1/2 C. full-fat plain yogurt
• 1 C. half and half
• 1 C. sugar
• 1/2 t. grated lime zest (from one lime or to your taste)
• Juice of 2 limes (to taste)
• Kosher salt (to taste)
• Diced fresh mango, fresh raspberries and additional lime zest for garnish

Instructions

1. Puree mangoes in processor until very smooth. You need about 1 1/2 C. puree for this recipe.
2. Put mango puree, yogurt, half and half, sugar and lime zest into a large bowl and whisk until combined. Whisk the mixture long enough that the sugar dissolves in the liquids and is not gritty. Gradually add the lime juice and kosher salt to the mixture to your taste. (I added the juice of both small limes and a good pinch of kosher salt to my batter.)
3. Chill the batter and then churn it in the ice cream maker of your choice. Once it is churned, store the frozen yogurt in an airtight container in your freezer for 3 o 4 hours before serving. If the frozen yogurt is very hard when you are ready to serve it, let it sit on your counter to soften.
4. Serve garnished with diced fresh mango, fresh raspberries and more lime zest. (The fresh raspberries are spectacular with this dish.)

Nutrition

Calories

375 cal

Fat

25 g

Carbs

43 g

Protein

7 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

191

https://bluecayenne.com/mango-lassi-frozen-yogurt

This recipe is adapted from one that appears on the Serious Eats site here.

Nineteen hundred and twenty two NY Times readers can’t be wrong. That is how many NYT cooks have rated this Guinness cake an average of five stars (out of five stars), some giving the cake rave written reviews sprinkled with praises like “Divine!” and  “Insanely Good!.”

Some of the NYT reviewers went so far as to suggest subbing in some Bailey’s Irish Cream for some of the heavy cream called for in the cream cheese frosting. Who could argue with that!

The only consistent negative review was that the cake, once baked, sinks a bit in the middle.  I figured that wouldn’t happen to me. Baking this cake isn’t my first rodeo. I know my way around the kitchen.

Sure enough, though,  when I baked the cake, the center sank. Damn.

Not to worry, though. There were lots of recommendations to relax (maybe drink some of the Irish Cream!) and just cover up that little flaw with a heavier application of the cream cheese frosting. Who would know?

It was also recommended to use a quality beer in the recipe, one with a more complicated flavor profile to enhance the cake’s flavor. One person, interestingly, recommended using North Coast’s Old Rasputin’s Imperial Stout in the recipe. What? Having taught European history for a very long time and being infatuated with Russian history, that recommendation caught my eye. Any beer named after the wily Rasputin has to be very interesting. Rasputin, if you have forgotten your Russian history, was the debauched consigliere to Tsarina Alexandra, the wife of the last Russian Tsar. Desperate, she welcomed him into the Russian court believing that he could cure her son’s hemophilia.  His subsequent notoriously-debauched behavior led to his murder by a group of nobles. The Romanov dynasty collapsed a few months later.

North Coast’s Old Rasputin’s Stout, it turns out, is produced in the tradition of 18th Century English brewers who supplied the court of Russia’s Catherine the Great. With its rich and complex flavors, the stout has quite a cult following. Seems kind of appropriate for a beer named after Rasputin.

Here is my adaptation of the recipe.

Chocolate Guinness Cake

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Ingredients

For the Cake
• Butter for pan
• 1 C. Guinness stout
• 10 T. unsalted butter
• 3/4 C. unsweetened cocoa
• 2 C. superfine sugar
• 3/4 C. sour cream
• 2 large eggs
• 1 T. vanilla extract
• 2 C. all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 t. baking soda
For the Frosting
• 1 1/4 C. confectioners' sugar
• 8 ounces cream cheese (at room temperature)
• 1/2 C. heavy cream (or a mixture of heavy cream and Bailey's Irish Cream)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Butter a 9-inch springform pan and line the pan with parchment paper.
3. Using a large saucepan, combine butter and Guinness over medium-low heat. Heat until the butter melts and then remove the pan from the heat. Add cocoa and superfine sugar and whisk to blend. (You can buy superfine sugar or you can put granulated sugar into your food processor and process until you have superfine sugar.)
4. In another bowl, combine sour cream, eggs and vanilla (I used vanilla paste) and mix well. Add the Guinness/butter mixture and mix well. Whisk the baking soda and flour together and add to the batter. Mix until smooth. Pour the batter into your buttered springform pan and bake until risen and firm, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Remove the pan from the oven and put on a wire rack to allow the cake to cool completely in the pan. (I baked the cake for about 45 minutes to avoid having a too dry cake. Nevertheless, I thought the cake was at its moist best on the second day.)
5. To make the frosting, mix confectioners' sugar with a hand mixer (or in your food processor) until any lumps are broken up. Then, add the cream cheese to the sugar and mix until smooth. Add the heavy cream (or the mixture of heavy cream and Bailey's Irish Cream) and mix until your frosting is smooth and can be easily spread on the top of your cake.
6. Remove the cooled cake from your springform pan and put it on a cake stand to ice. Ice the top of the cake only. You want the final frosted cake to resemble a frothy pint of Guinness.

Nutrition

Calories

5325 cal

Fat

174 g

Carbs

815 g

Protein

62 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

188

https://bluecayenne.com/a-chocolate-guinness-cake-and-a-little-russian-history

We are enjoying the first glorious days of spring here in Southern California. Plants are budding and the sweet little birds are singing their sweet little songs. I have a Black Phoebe in my backyard who is entertaining me and Juliet with  swoops and other feats of derring do.  She is looking for nesting material. I hope. I hope.

This, then, is a great day to sit outside with a good book, a pitcher of something and a banana bread all to yourself.

Banana bread?

Bananas, after all, are the most popular fruit in the world. There are at least 1000 varieties of bananas and they are grown in 150 countries. Today, the most popular banana (and the most consumed) is the Cavendish. Daniel Stone, writing on National Geographic.com, wrote of the fruit: “It crosses historical eras, has been responsible for entire governments rising and falling, and has propped up beleaguered economies. If fruits were countries, the banana would be the world’s superpower. If fruits were pop stars, the banana would be Beyoncé.” Funny.

Bananas are also the most popular fruit (actually a berry) in the U.S. where U.S. per capita consumption was 28.54 pounds in 2017. Whoa!

Here, bananas even have their own national day. Actually there are several banana days. National Banana Day is on April 17. National Banana Bread Day is on January 21. National Banana Split Day is on August 25.  You get the picture.

Bananas have intrigued people for centuries. They are represented in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Alexander the Great wrote about them when his armies invaded India in 327 B.C.  In Thailand, there is a wonderful ghost story that a beautiful green-clad spirit named Nam Tani haunts wild banana groves and makes herself visible on full moon nights. She is particularly edgy about men who harm women (You go, Nam Tani!) and some Thais tie a silk cloth around the trunks of banana trees where she is thought to lurk–warning men to be careful in her territory.

This banana bread recipe produces a moist and rich bread stuffed with cream cheese. What could be better than that? It is a superstar!

Cream Cheese Banana Bread

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Ingredients

For the Banana Bread
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 C. light brown sugar (packed)
• 1/4 C. granulated sugar
• 1/4 C. liquid-state coconut oil
• 1/4 C. Greek yogurt (or sour cream)
• 2 t. vanilla extract (I used vanilla paste)
• 1 C. mashed ripe bananas (about 2 bananas)
• 1 C. all-purpose flour
• 1/2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• pinch of salt
• Powdered sugar to garnish
For the Cream Cheese Filling
• 1 large egg
• 4 oz. softened brick-style cream cheese
• 1/4 C. granulated sugar
• 3 T. all-purpose flour

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Prepare a 9 inch by 5 inch loaf pan by oiling it and dusting it with flour. Alternatively, spray with a flour and oil baking spray.
3. Mix the egg, brown sugar, granulated sugar, coconut oil, Greek yogurt (or sour cream) and vanilla extract (or paste) together.
4. Mash bananas and stir into the sugar and oil mixture.
5. Whisk all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. Add the flour mixture to the banana/sugar mixture. Stir to combine ingredients but do not overmix.
6. Prepare cream cheese filling. Combine egg, cream cheese, sugar and flour in a bowl. Mix with a hand mixer until the mixture is smooth.
7. Pour about 1/2 of the banana batter into your prepared loaf pan. Smooth the top of the batter. Spoon all of the cream cheese filling over the banana batter. Smooth the cream cheese mixture and, using a spatula, spread the mixture evenly across the top of the batter and to the edges of the pan. Top with the remaining batter. Using a spatula, smooth the top to spread the batter to the edges of the pan.
8. Bake for 50 minutes at 350 degrees F. or until the top of your banana bread is rounded and golden brown. (At 30 minutes, remove the bread from the oven and cover it with a layer of foil to keep the top of the bread from burning.) Return the covered bread to the oven. At the end of baking, you will want to check that the cake batter is set with a skewer inserted into the center of the cake. The skewer should come out clean. Remember that you have a cream cheese layer in the middle of your banana bread and that part of the bread will not give you a totally clean skewer. Remember, too, that this bread, with the cream cheese and the mashed bananas, is a very moist bread.
9. Cool the bread on your counter. When it is cooled, cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit overnight before cutting.

Nutrition

Calories

4636 cal

Fat

93 g

Carbs

629 g

Protein

80 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

185

https://bluecayenne.com/beyonce-and-cream-cheese-banana-bread

This recipe is adapted from one that appears on the Averie Cooks blog. Here is a link to her site: Averie Cooks.