Going bananas

My new office has baskets of bananas and apples throughout the suite.  At first I thought these were decorations, but nope, they are for eating.  I will never buy an apple or banana again.  I asked a coworker what happens with the bananas at the end of the week and she said "YOU take them home, make banana bread and bring it back on Monday.  70% of us like nuts."  Oh.  Well.  OK.  I have not yet been brave enough to stuff my purse full of brown bananas but I am almost there.

In the meantime, I purchased some bananas and made banana pudding.  I used this recipe for the pudding.  It's creamy and delicious.  Then I got all fancy and put it in a pie, using this recipe as the go-by, but again using the other recipe for the pudding.  One recipe of the pudding was enough for two pies.  I skipped the lemon juice and mixed the wafers and banana slices in the pudding.  Spoon it in the pie shell, scatter on more wafers, drizzle the caramel sauce and dot with whipped cream.  After setting up in the refrigerator it does actually slice nicely.  Or, just got at it with a spoon.  Either way.

Apple Crisp

I very much enjoy apple crisp.  Baked apples have always been one of my favorite treats and add a crust... yum!!  This crisp is super easy.  I used granny smith apples, sliced thinly and did not even bother peeling.  I reduced the sugar on the apples to probably 1/3 cup, just sprinkled it all over the apples and called it a day.  One cup seems WAY TOO much. I did not make any changes to the crust.  I wondered if the shortening would be "boring" compared to using butter but nope, it was fantastic!  This crisp is great on its own, warmed up for breakfast or served with vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream.

Blueberry Lemon Pound Cake

The original poster of this cake calls it Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake.  Since there are 10 times more blueberries than lemon, I am going to call it BLUEBERRY lemon cake.  No matter what you call it, it is delicious and simple to make.  

The lemon flavor is very mild in the cake but highlighted in the glaze.  I used the juice of 2 lemons and the zest of 1 in the glaze in order to use up the juice in the lemon I zested for the cake.  Also, I do not think you can over do lemon!  The other changes I made were using whole milk with a tablespoon of vinegar to make it buttermilk, I pressed some extra blueberries in the top of the batter and I baked it in one bread pan.  This added about 20 minutes to the cooking time.