Banana bread is one of my favorite things to eat when I’m hungry or when I’m needing a little pick-me-up during the afternoons. I guess as a lover of all things banana, I just enjoy the goodness of the banana flavors and the comforting bite of the tender and moist bread. To me, I’ve always thought that banana bread isn’t really a bread at all, it’s more of a cake (just like the Dutch apple cake that we posted recently). Can anyone tell me why they’re called breads?
And of course, when you add walnuts to the mix, that just adds another layer of texture to it. I almost always add more nuts to my batter than what is called for. For some reason, walnuts just go really well with bananas. I read somewhere that toasting the nuts also prevents the nuts from turning black in the baked goods. So, I toast the walnuts before adding them in to the batter.
It smells like a burning tire but tastes like the sweetest custard apple.
We are really happy to be living here in Sarawak. Time and again, the kindness and the generosity of the people here simply blow us away. Last month, when we invited our friend Paul and his family over for a big, home-cooked Japanese meal of miso soup, niku-jaga, kabocha no nimono, and sesame salad with chicken, they brought over a couple of these unique fruits called “buah tarap” to eat for dessert.
A simple dessert that will satisfy your cheese cake cravings without going overboard with the calories. And making it is as easy as, well, pie!
Cheese Pie with Peaches
This isn’t a savory cheese pie like a spinach or a tomato cheese pie. It’s a dessert recipe I got from my ThirdAunt a long time ago. It’s really very similar to a cheese cake except that the base is made using crushed Marie biscuits. You also don’t use as much cream cheese (only one 250g block) as most cheese cake recipes. And I would say it’s not as rich as a New York-style cheese cake. Unlike some previous cheese cake attempts, I have never had any cracking issues when baking this cheese pie. I’ve even over-baked it a few times and it still comes out pretty good. So for those who don’t like the hassle of a bain marie (water bath) or if you like cheese cakes but would rather have a lighter version, this is the recipe for you.
Well, kinda. Rambutans are tree fruits which are close cousins to the lychee and the longan. Like a lychee, they are ovoid (egg) shaped, about 2 inches long, and have a hard, inedible seed at the center. But instead of the smooth skins of those two other fruits, rambutans have thin, fleshy spines growing out of them. These spines not sharp like a durian, but pliable like a dragonfruit. The spines are more like thick hairs. In fact, the name “rambutan” comes from the Malay word for hair, rambut.
