August 26, 2011: Banana Lovers’ Day, Pots de Crème Day
Food of the Day for a One-Year Goal
Day: #51

Saturday was Banana Lovers’ Day and Pots de Crème Day, so I decided to whip up a pot de crème with banana caramel sauce.

Did I type “whip up”? In my dreams. However, the recipe only had four ingredients for the pot de crème and four ingredients for the banana caramel sauce, and I had most of the ingredients—sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla. But I did need heavy whipping cream and bananas, and while I was at the store I felt certain I had left caramel off my list—after all, the recipe included banana caramel sauce—so I picked up some Hershey’s caramel sauce.

Once I had assembled all the ingredients and read the recipe several times, I was convinced that there was a typo and it was really banana caramelized sauce, because I just could not figure out where the caramel fit in.

Now, I have to stop and acknowledge Cousin Carla for an eggcellent—maybe the best-ever—cooking tip: separating eggs in your hand! Many of you will remember the cool Ezcracker gadget I bought for separating eggs (and I do still love it), but cracking the egg in my hand to separate it works so well and is so handy, I will probably never use the Ezcracker gadget again. (Carla acknowledged her cooking hero Alton Brown for the tip.)

Ok, back to our pot de crème with banana caramel caramelized sauce. The custard (called crème in France) came together without a hitch and after it cooled and firmed up, just as the recipe predicted it would, I began to make the caramelized sauce. I was delighted when the sugar and water reached the dark amber color it was supposed to turn, and I quickly added in the cream and butter. I let it cool, stirred in the bananas and poured it over the custard.

Ta-da. Not perfect, but darn close to the picture. Moments after I snapped a picture, Cole arrived in the kitchen to have the first bite.

“Mom, this is great! I love the caramel sauce.”

“Actually, the sauce is just caramelized sugar with butter and crème added in.”

“Mom, it tastes exactly like caramel.”

I then had a taste and, sure enough, it tasted exactly like caramel.

“That’s odd…I did not add any caramel to the sauce.”

“Mom, you made caramel sauce.”

“You can’t make caramel sauce. You buy it in a jar or unwrap the caramel candy.”

Even I was struck by how really dumb this sounded, plus Cole was now staring at me hard. So I got excited.

I can hardly believe I actually made caramel sauce. Good caramel sauce. Who knew you could make caramel sauce. I could dip an apple in this…wow.

Cole took another bite with a banana in it and asked, “Mom you know where bananas come from, right?”

Don’t you just hate kids!! Can’t imagine what possessed Emily to have five of them, but she did and they all loved their light chocolate pot de crème. It’s perfect!

 

Odd loves company! Hope you will leave a comment. I will be back later to muse about Cherry Turnover Day. Yum!

♥
Kb