Banana & Coconut Pradhaman/ Payasam

I am not usually a fruit in a payasam sort of person - I love me milk with sugar and cardamom, at times with freshly cooked rice. But the challenge for Avant Garde Cookies for the hush-hush week that Roshni laid on me was using fruits or whatever to make a pradhaman. Thanks for the push, Roshni - We actually loved it and it was almost a meal to have a cup of that, as a replacement for breakfast.

A very simple and quick to put together recipe.

Ingredients

• 4 ripe bananas
• 1 can condensed milk
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 1 cup of sweetened coconut (grated)
• 1tsp of cardamom
• 7-8 crushed cashews
• 1tsp of coconut oil
• 1tsp of butter

Method

1. Empty condensed milk and the evaporated milk in a sauce pan and whisk together. 
2. Pour into a mixer along with the bananas and blend until smooth
3. Pour back into the saucepan and start heating
4. In a separate pan, lightly brown the coconut and cashews with 1 tsp of butter
5. Add to the boiling mix 
6. Allow it to cook with the pradhaman for about 2-3 minutes
7. Add 1 tsp of coconut oil before serving 

Enjoy :)

Banana Upside Down Cake

What do you do when you have a sweet craving? Sometimes you give in and go the whole nine yards and make something with what you've got. Thus came about this banana upside down cake. I has several super ripe bananas - hate those btw - and the only way I could imagine having them was in either a bread or with this recipe, in a cake. I used a recipe that I'd already tried out for the cake and just added the caramelized bananas...
Ingredients

• ½ cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1.5 cup all purpose flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 4-6 ripe bananas
• 3-4 tbsp Demerara sugar 

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Butter a 9 inch pan (I used pyrex)
3. Cut bananas lengthwise and arrange neatly on the bottom of the pan
4. Sprinkle the Demerara Sugar generously over the bananas
5. Cream butter and sugar in a mixer
6. Add eggs 1 at a time
7. Then the flour with the baking powder
8. Mix until it s a creamy batter (don’t over mix)
9. Pour the cake batter evenly over the bananas making sure not to disturb the arrangement.
10. Bake for about 30 -35 minutes or until the top of the cake is golden.
11. Cool it before loosening the sides of the cake
12. Gently invert on to a cake holder.
13. The bananas should look glazed, caramelized and delicious. 
14. Enjoy by itself of with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream.