Sunday, August 12, 2012

Give You The Detailed Information About Bourbon Banana Puddings

I believe that almost all the people in the world all love pudding very much, and there are also a lot of types of flavors you can choose. Banana pudding sits high in the royal court of Southern desserts, and it doesn’t get much better than the classic recipe on the back of the Nilla wafer box. But sometimes it can't hurt to experiment, and it’s not often difficult to find a line of folks ready and willing to try my latest spin.


Bourbon Banana Puddings

Pudding Base
  • 2 cups whole or 2% milk
  • 4 large egg yolks
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup light brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon table salt
  • 4 tablespoons bourbon or whiskey
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
To Assemble
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 30 gingersnap cookies
  • 4 ripe bananas, sliced crosswise
For The Pudding Base

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, bring milk to a gentle simmer over medium heat. In a separate bowl, combine egg yolks, sugar, brown sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Stir a small amount of the warmed milk into the yolk mixture to temper the eggs. Whisk the yolk mixture back into the into the saucepan with the remaining milk. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook until the custard starts to thicken, about 3-5 minutes. Stir in the bourbon and vanilla and continue cooking until glossy and quite thick, another 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in the butter, stirring until it is completely melted.

Push pudding through a fine mesh sieve into a large bowl. Press plastic wrap directly over the surface of the pudding and refrigerate for a minimum of four hours, or overnight.

To Assemble

In a medium bowl, beat the heavy cream and vanilla with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the bourbon pudding until no visible streaks remain. In individual serving glasses, layer pudding, gingersnaps, and bananas, finishing with a layer of pudding on top. Chill for 4 hours (and no longer than eight) before serving. Crush remaining gingersnaps and sprinkle crumbs over the top.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Easy Strawberry Cupcake Recipe For You

One of the most common questions that shows up in my inbox has to do with my Doctored Up Cake Mix Recipe for chocolate cupcakes. It yields a batch of pretty stellar cupcakes, so people are always curious if they can adapt the recipe with different flavor combinations. To which I respond, why not? To me, baking is all about playing around in the kitchen, sometimes I get it right and sometimes, I get it wrong – way wrong.

However, a lot of my readers come here for recipes that have been tested in my kitchen and aren’t too keen on me advising them to head into the realm of recipe development and testing. And that’s okay too. I’ll get responses like, Well, have you tried it? What pudding did you use? What brand of cake works best? Can I use less oil? The list goes on and on.

I love hearing from you guys, and really what’s the point of this blog if people aren’t making the recipes – so I try to answer each question, even if it takes me weeks and weeks and weeks.


My point is, a lot of what I do here on MBA is trial and error and it’s okay to make mistakes and get frustrated and cuss out your cupcakes. But, I promise you that with each error, you’ll learn something. Even if that something is not to bite into a hot Rolo Cookie because it will burn your lip and leave a weird purple mark – not that I did that or anything.

When my BFF, Brittani, told me that she made Strawberry Cupcakes using the boxed mix recipe, I immediately started asking her questions to which she had very few answers. I thought her idea would be the perfect way to show you that playing around with a simple idea can have great results and there’s really nothing to be afraid of.

Boxed vanilla cake mix combines with Greek strawberry yogurt and fresh strawberries to create simple, moist cupcakes that are bursting with strawberry flavor. Add on a swirl of strawberry buttercream and you’ve got one stellar summery cupcake with minimal fuss. The world is your oyster here, folks. Try it with Peach Greek yogurt and fresh peaches, or Blueberry yogurt and fresh blueberries. I’d love to hear the combinations you come up with, and how they worked for you.