Cinnamon banana wraps

I was craving for something buttery and sweet today and I finally came up with these banana wraps. At first I was thinking of calling them "banana puff", but I decided to go with "wraps". They are very quick and easy to make, especially if you use store-bought or pre-made puff pastry. Honestly, I can`t see myself making my own pastry sheet. Not in a gazillion year.

Oh I really should finish this post quickly because I need to meditate before Monday comes. And by meditate, I mean not doing anything. I believe that`s what Sunday night is for.

So here`s how to make the wraps: 

Cut pre-made puff pastry into 8 triangles. 

I should feel embarrassed showing you my cutting ability, but this reminds me of how I should get a ruler for my kitchen. 

Brush the pastry with olive oil. 

Sprinkle over brown sugar and cinnamon.

If you want, you can do the cutting after this stage. About the amount of the sugar, I wanted the wraps to be just slightly sweet, so I only used like 1 tbs of it. If you`re a sweet tooth person, you might want to add more sugar.

Now, I don`t have the picture here, but you need to slice a banana into approximately 2-cm thick coins.

Wrapping time.

Take one pastry triangle, place a banana slice at the center, and fold in one pointy edge like in the picture.

Next, fold in the other two edges to the center to cover the whole banana. Done!

Or done-ish, because there is an optional step where you seal the wraps with egg wash (which I didn`t) and brush the surface too (which I did).

One thing I learned from here is not to overdo the brushing because the egg will drip to the bottom of the pastry and get burned during the baking.

Done! Now bake them in a preheated oven at 200 C for 15-20 min or until nicely puffed up and golden brown.

They`re puffy and buttery with sweet cinnamony banana filling inside. Just perfect for our freezing Sunday evening. I totally recommend you to have this with a cup of hot chai because it`ll make everything perfecter.

As I didn`t seal the wraps, they all puffed open and I can`t find proper words to describe their shapes, except "unknown random puffs". Good thing that I have the pictures, so you can define it your self. 

For those of you who wondered what that robot was doing there, this was a special request from my husband who wanted me to include his new pet robot toy in the picture. Well, I had nothing else in mind to style up the wraps anyway. I seriously need to improve my propping style.

Have a lovely Sunday!

Print recipe

CINNAMON BANANA WRAPS

Makes 8 wraps

Ingredients:

18 x 18-cm pre-made puff pastry

1 tbs olive oil

1-2 tbs brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 banana, sliced into coins

1 egg

Method:

1. Cut pre-made puff pastry into 8 triangles.

2. Brush the pastry with olive oil

3. Sprinkle over brown sugar and cinnamon

4. Slice banana into 2-cm thick coins

5. Take one triangle, place one slice of banana, and wrap by folding all three pointy edges of the pastry into the center.

6. Brush with egg wash.

7. Bake in preheated oven at 200 C for 15-20 min or until nicely puffed up and golden brown.

Pretzella

First time I had mini pretzels, I knew that I had to do some makeover with them, only I was completely clueless about what I could do. To me it`s a little too dry and the taste was too plain, although fairly speaking, the only pretzels I`ve ever had were from the store packed in a bag like potato chips and they were sprinkled with salt. 

But that was a story from the past, because pretzel never looks the same to me anymore. It was last month when I stumbled upon an awesome post at Live Love Pasta showing how to make chocolate bark using pretzel and that post really got me excited to start my pretzel project. Next thing I knew, I had my chocolate-drizzled pretzels, which I named Pretzella for their pretty princessy looks, lining up on my kitchen counter.
Last December, I made chocolate bark with assorted nuts and it was undoubtedly good not to mention how extremely easy to make it. But this time, I wanted to bring the chocolate-pretzel goodie to my lab as Christmas gifts, so I thought it was better to prepare it in individual portions. With the bark, however, I imagined it would be difficult to divide it into equal portions without the risk of cracking it (in a bad way). I`m just too clumsy to handle it.

Anyway, I finally came up with the Pretzella, certainly with simple method, and here`s what I used:

 Dark chocolate...

...white chocolate..and milk chocolate (no picture here).

And the last ingredient but with huge impact is....

...this joyous full-of-color decorative sprinkles. I don`t usually use artificial coloring in my cooking, but this time I made an exception. This time, I was much much much happier with it.

Let`s assemble now.

 

Arrange the mini pretzels on a parchment paper or aluminium foil.

Let your wildest and craziest imagination guide you designing your pretzella. For me, this was what I could think of so far and I`d love to see your version!

After arranging the pretzels, prepare the chocolate. Or, do it reversely, especially if the chocolate is quick to set.
Break the chocolate bars into pieces, place them in separate bowls, and melt them in microwave or double boiler. If you use microwave like I do, heat it for 1 min, check if it melts, and reheat if necessary. If you use double boiler, make sure you keep the simmering water even after the chocolate has melted because you may need to reheat the chocolate later.

With a spoon (or whatever suits you), drizzle the melted dark chocolate over the pretzels leaving the center unfilled. The basic idea is using the chocolate to glue the pretzels together into whatever shapes you make.

Now carefully fill the center with the melted white chocolate. I flattened the "peak" of the white chocolate by gently brushing it down with the tip of a fork.

I know, it looks as if a toddler made them. In fact, if only I had kids, I would tell people it was them who did the work.

For the last touch, dress them up with the sprinkles. Make sure that you add the sprinkles quick enough before the chocolate starts to set. The sprinkles will easily come off, or won`t stick at all, if you add them after the chocolate has set.

Bibidi-bobidi-boo! The mini pretzels has turned into pretty pretzella!

This is after I let the pretzella sit at room temperature for 15 mins or probably less. In winter, our room is usually cold because we don`t turn on the heater unless the chill is unbearable. You can keep it in fridge if you want.

And this is the back view. The chocolate enters the holes and spreads a little bit making it stick properly to the pretzel.

 And these are pretzella with milk chocolate in another design. Hair barrette, anyone?

Eye candy, yes. My husband`s face lit up the second he saw them. Crowd pleaser, of course.

After all, you can`t possibly go wrong with pretzel and chocolate, can you?

PRETZELLA

Ingredients:

Dark chocolate

White chocolate

Milk chocolate

Mini pretzels

Decorative sprinkles

Method:

1. Break all chocolate into pieces, place in separate bowls, and melt them in microwave or double boiler.

2. Arrange mini pretzels on parchment paper or aluminium foil.

3. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the pretzels to glue them together.

4. Before the chocolate sets, quickly sprinkle the decorative sprinkles.

5. Let the chocolate set in refrigerator or at room temperature if it is cold enough outside.

Petits choux au fromage (cheese puffs)

Confessions: I don`t speak French. And I` ve never been to French restaurants. And it`s one of my biggest dreams to visit France someday!

Clearly, this is the fanciest name ever I used in this blog, thanks to Julia Child`s cookbook. And since I don`t know how to pronounce those words, let me just refer this appetizer as Cheese puffs as how she translated it.

If you are a fan of cream puffs, eclairs, and even gnocchi, then you need to know how easy it is to make the choux or puff shells. I used Julia`s recipe and I think it`s quite a foolproof one since the result is pretty satisfying despite my first time making it.

So let`s start with the choux paste.

Place butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg in water and slowly bring to boil on low heat.This paste will be used for making cheese puffs, so the paste needs to taste a bit salty.

Note: If you`re making dessert puffs, reduce the salt to a pinch and add a tsp of sugar. 

When butter has melted and boiled, remove from heat, immediately pour in flour all at once, and quickly stir.

Then, put back the pan over medium-high heat to evaporate the remaining water content. Keep stirring until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan and the spoon.

Remove from heat again and beat in an egg.

Beat it until smooth and repeat the process with the rest of the eggs, one egg at a time.

The more egg you added, the longer time it takes to be smooth.

This is how it looks after the last egg was beat in and this means, your choux paste is done! If you`re making the puff shells for dessert, you can continue with piping and baking.

However, as the name says Cheese puffs, we need to fold in grated cheese to the paste. I used camembert and parmesan (cheap ones, probably not real, lol).

Now, line a baking tin with parchment paper and place some paste in a pastry bag. I`m a messy person (and everyone knows that), so whenever I have to use a pastry bag, I always clip it with this potato-chip-bag-clipper to avoid dough/batter oozing out during the piping. If  the batter easily  flows out from the opening (like whipped cream or macaron), you can add another clip right on the upper side of the fitted nozzle when you fill in the bag with the batter.

Pipe out the paste onto the paper making small mounds (mine was about 3-cm in diameter) and space them about 2-cm apart. And by the way, I shouldn`t have bothered to choose the nozzle shape.

The next steps are optional. Lightly brush the top with beaten egg and sprinkle with grated cheese.

Bake in 210 C for 20 mins. You`ll see how they fantastically swell up turning into fat round balls.Cute!

Cheese puffs!! Cheese puffs!!

The puffs have firm and crusty exterior with soft layer underneath. Calling them as cheese shells sounds more proper, though.

Oh shoot, I should save some for him.

Eclair is what`s on my mind right now. Maybe next time. Tomorrow? Nah, let`s get real.

Ingredients*:

Choux paste (about 2 cups)

1 cup water

85 g butter

150 g flour

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

Pepper

Nutmeg

Cheese puffs

2 cups choux pastry

80 g grated/powdered cheese

Baking:

210 C for 20 mins

*Recipe from Julia Child`s Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Marbled chocolate bark with assorted nuts

I know, I know, many of you probably still taste too much sweetness from the Christmas feast in your mouth. But I just couldn`t help making my chocolate bark ever since I heard about peppermint bark. I saw many people displaying their pretty barks and I was very surprised to know that it`s incredibly easy to make. The only thing is, as much as I keep drooling every time I look at those barks, I`m not a sweet tooth person. So, instead of placing candies over sugary chocolate, I chose plain (non-fry, unsweetened, unsalted) mixed nuts contain of almond, walnuts, and cashew nuts. You can also try dry fruits, crackers, biscuit, et cetera et cetera.

For the bark, I used dark (bitter) chocolate and white chocolate. We`re about to have fun here.

Back to the nuts, place them in a food processor and let them chopped.

Keep processing until you get the consistency right. I stopped at this point. Not too fine, not too coarse. Set aside when you`re done.

Now, break the chocolate bars into small pieces and place them in separate microwaveable bowls.

Heat them in microwave at 800 W for 1 minute. I didn`t cover the bowls with plastic wrap because I wanted to avoid any water coming in from the steam that might be formed during the heating.
After 1 minute heating, take out the bowl, stir up the softened chocolate with a spoon and see if it needs more heating. If it does, reheat it for few more seconds. Mine was done with 1 min and 20 secs, both for the dark and white chocolate.

So here`s the melted dark chocolate. Gorgeously glossy. Try say it outloud. I ended up saying "grogeously groly", "golgeously golly", or "gorljsly gossy". I really wish it only happens to me.

And here`s the white one.

Line a baking pan with parchment paper (I didn`t butter the paper and it worked just fine). Place dollops of dark chocolate randomly on the pan.

Then, place dollops of white chocolate on remaining spaces.

Here comes the fun! Get your rubber spatula and let`s paint! Oh...I love doing this. The white and the brown swirl and swirl and swirl all over the pan with my finger, err..spatula.

Alright, I finally managed to stop my self before I overmix the color. Depends on your liking, the more you brush them, the less marbling looky you`ll get. I smiled a lot in the kitchen doing this.

Put down your spatula and now is time to sprinkle the nuts. Sprinkle the happiness and crunchiness all over the place. Only on the pan, please. Not on the kitchen floor. I was carried away.

Gently push down any loose nuts so they properly stick to the chocolate. When you think it looks alright, let it set. You`ll find in many recipes to keep it in freezer for a while. But, if your room temperature is cold enough like mine, which is about 10 C, just let it sit outside. Mine was set after 1.5 hours. On top of my TV.

After it set, slowly dislodge the bark from the paper. I had no problem at all, so I think you`ll be fine too. And look at how thin it is.

As much as you want to bite it right away (I wanted to), break the chocolate into chunks and serve them to your husband or boyfriend. He`ll buy you a nice gift. Or to your kids as a holiday treat. You`ll win The Most Favorite Mother award this year. Or to your friends. They`ll remember how sweet you are. Just tell`em all to brush their teeth afterward.

Ingredients:
For 24x18-cm baking pan
Dark chocolate, 50 g
White chocolate, 90 g
Mixed nuts, 80 g