Join Juliet and me as we conga around the kitchen island singing Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song .

Got you in the mood for a banana recipe?

The way I figure it, everyone needs a few good banana recipes. Bananas are a health food, after all. According to the LiveStrong site: “The high levels of potassium and carbohydrates in bananas make them a good source of fuel for athletes. The fiber in bananas can help to lower your risk for intestinal problems, high cholesterol, heart disease and diabetes. The fiber can help fill you up and keep you feeling full for longer, helping you keep from eating more calories than you need and gaining weight.” What’s not to love?

I figure everyone also needs a few great banana recipes to use up those unsightly overripe bananas that inevitably end up in your fruit bowl–you know, the ones that shrivel, turn black and ooze out of their skins without the least provocation. (You can, by the way, freeze those over-ripe banana bad boys and use them –right outta the freezer– in any cake recipe that calls for bananas.)

In my home, in addition to my conga-loving rescue pup, Juliet, banana obsession extends to my  27-year-old umbrella cockatoo, Moti. Woe be it to me if I don’t promptly deliver a food dish with a few banana slices to her cage early each morning. I’ve been known to make a sleepy-eyed  early-morning banana run to the supermarket to keep Moti in bananas. Trust me, there is no sunshine in in anyone’s day if Moti doesn’t have her morning banana.

Moti is smart, too. Early each morning, perched on one foot next to her water bottle, she ever-so-carefully places pieces of her other foods onto the velcro-like sticky surface of her banana slices where they stay as she eats a little banana and then a little of her other foods, washing it all down with big gulps of fresh water. (What can I say? Everyone is a foodie in my house.)

Fortunately for us all, bananas have been around forever. Well, almost forever. Food historians trace the domestication of bananas to New Guinea around 8000 BCE, making them perhaps the first cultivated fruit. Later, Muslim traders spread the banana across Asia and into Europe and, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese explorers brought the plant to the new world. In today’s America, the average American consumes 27.9 pounds of bananas each year.

By the way, the plant in the photo (above) is a yellow African begonia, a Staudtil microsperma, from Nigeria by way of Andy’s Orchids in Encinitas.  For my gardening friends who are reading this blog, here is the link to Andy’s website:  Andy’s Orchids .  Prepare to be overwhelmed by the collection Andy has put together.

This truly wonderful banana cake recipe is adapted from one that appeared in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Here is a link to that book: Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home to Yours.

From everyone here, Day-O! to you and yours.

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Olive oil in a cake? Yuck.

Don’t get me wrong. I love olive oil. I regularly drive to Los Alamitos’ Antica Olive Oil store to buy the best olive oils I can find. There, I enthusiastically swirl, sniff, sip and swallow  the various offerings freshly poured from the fusti, searching for the olive oil with the most grassy flavor and the most peppery bite–all the better if it is chock-full of polyphenol antioxidants.

I’m hooked.

But putting three-fourths of a cup of the pungent stuff in a cake? I dunno. Seems wrong to me.

On the other hand, the olive oil cake in this month’s Cook’s Illustrated Magazine had me intrigued. True, I’ve been seeing olive oil cakes in a number of publications in recent years, but up until now I’ve simply registered the idea as an engaging one and quietly slid the copied recipe to the bottom of what is my burgeoning stack of “to try” recipes. But, if Cook’s Illustrated touts a recipe, my cooking instincts told me, it must be good.

Too, I let my heart get away from me at last week’s farmers’ market. I bought six baskets of exquisite organic strawberries. However you cut it them, that is a whole lot of strawberries for one lady and a small sweet dog to consume. So, I was looking for something interesting to serve as a strawberry shortcake. Olive oil cake? Why not?

It turns out that the distinct taste of a fruity olive oil complements the slightly sweet flavor of the cake.

Here is the link to the Cook’s Illustrated article about olive oil cakes: https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/462-olive-oil-cake

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Do the words five ingredients and gourmet dessert go together? Throw in the word fast and you have this gorgeous strawberry tart.

Your guests will rave (in a good way).

You may be unfamiliar with mascarpone cheese, the main ingredient in this tart. Mascarpone is a mild-flavored soft double or triple cream cheese that originated in the Lombardy region of Italy. It is similar to cream cheese or a thick French creme fraiche. You may need to sit down before reading the next line, though. Mascarpone has a fat content that ranges from sixty to seventy-five percent. There are six grams of fat in a single tablespoon of the cheese. Fortunately a small slice of this tart is very satisfying!

Typically, mascarpone is a dessert ingredient. It is a chief ingredient in Italy’s decadent tiramisu dessert, for example, but it also is used in savory dishes like pastas. You can buy mascarpone in the dairy section of markets like Trader Joe’s.

There are links at the bottom of this post to the original recipe from the How Sweet Eats blog, to a tutorial for carving the roses (it’s a cinch!), and to a do-it-yourself recipe for making mascarpone at home if you want to give that a try.

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Here is a link to a tutorial on carving the strawberry roses: Carving Strawberry Roses

Here is the link to the original recipe on the How Sweet Eats blog: Five Ingredient Strawberry Tart

Here is a link to a recipe to make your own mascarpone that appears on the Epicurious site: Do-it-yourself mascarpone from Epicurious