Recently, Kristy at KSayerphotography had a giveaway on her blog.  The prize was 14 blocks of Alter Eco Pacific chocolate.  First of all, I saw “14 blocks of chocolate”!  Awesome prize!  Then I realized I had never heard of Alter Eco Pacific chocolate before.  I went to their website to have a look.

Alter Eco Pacific is based in Australia.  Their products are Fair Trade, organic, and contain nothing artificial.  They use sustainable farming methods and natural fertilizers.  Just reading this on their website made me feel really great about consuming their chocolate.

I entered Kristy’s giveaway and hoped for the best!

A little while later, I received word that I had won the giveaway!  Awesome!  About a week later, I was opening the parcel containing over 1 kilogram of chocolate.  Here is what I had won:

Delicious!

Some of this chocolate I could bake with, and some I was going to just simply eat.  In this post, I’ll give a brief review of each of the blocks, and also give you a Donna Hay recipe that I made with the chocolate.

The first block I tried was the Crystallized Orange Peel chocolate.  I do love chocolate and orange!  The chocolate was exceptionally smooth and the orange peel, although while slightly annoyingly chewy, lent a hint of orange.  The orange was not strong or overpowering, just gentle and soft.  I didn’t bake with this chocolate; I just ate it straight from the block!

Next, I tried the Quinoa, which is another block I did not bake with, but just simply ate.  This chocolate was much darker in flavor than the orange.  I think the quinoa is a nice textural addition to the chocolate, giving it a bit of a crunch.  I had never eaten quinoa before tasting this.  I feel I still don’t have a good idea of what quinoa tastes like, as I mainly just tasted the dark chocolate in this block.

I had to try to bake something with this chocolate, so I used a bit of the Dark Velvet (which contains organic milk) in some chocolate chunk cookies.  They were very delicious, but I actually loved eating this chocolate straight from the block more than the cookies.  It was very, very velvety and so smooth.  It wasn’t as hard as the other blocks.  I loved it!

Another one I decided to use in a batch of chocolate chunk cookies was the Cocao Nib.  This one I was really looking forward to try, as I had never eaten cocao nibs.  I loved the crunch and I loved the taste of this block.  In the cookies, the crunch was more subtle after baking.  Again though, I wish I wouldn’t have baked with this block as I wanted to eat more of it on its own!

The Almond one was delicious as well, much better than any almond chocolate bar you’d by in the candy aisle at the grocery store!

I used both whole blocks of the Blackout chocolate, containing 85% cocoa, to make Donna Hay’s dark chocolate and caramel pudding.  This recipe is on the cover of her most recent winter magazine.  The pudding is basically made up of a layer of dulce de leche on the bottom, and gooey chocolate cake on top – in other words, heaven!

This recipe was so heavenly I made it twice in two weeks!  For the first go, I used Alter Eco’s Pacific Blackout.  The block melted down so smoothly and smelled great as they melted.  The end result was super delicious and super chocolaty.  The recipe for this is at the end of this post.

I’m saving the best chocolate for last… the Mint Chocolate.  I have tasted a lot of mint chocolate, and although I like the combination, I normally wouldn’t name it as one of my favorites.  But this block of mint chocolate was the best ever mint chocolate I have tasted in my entire life.  It contains tiny pieces of peppermint which are crunchy and release bursts of mint that are just to die for.  This was without a doubt my most favorite of Alter Eco Pacific’s chocolate.

My second favorite was the Dark Velvet.  My least favorite was the orange.

I’ve got to find where these blocks are sold and buy some more to add to my stash.  My last mint chocolate is half gone, and I feel I absolutely need to have more!

 

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Dark Chocolate And Caramel Pudding
Adapted from Donna Hay magazine, issue 57
Makes 4* (see my note below)

Ingredients
1 x 380g can store-bought caramel filling*
1/3 cup (80ml) double (thick) cream
200g dark chocolate, chopped
60g unsalted butter
3 eggs
½ cup (90g) brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup (60g) almond meal
Cocoa, for dusting

Method
Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Place the caramel in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Add the cream and mix well to combine. Place 1/3 cup (80ml) of the caramel mixture in the base of a 4 x 1 ½ cup-capacity (375ml) ovenproof dishes.

Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir until the chocolate is melted and smooth.

Place the eggs, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 8-10 minutes or until doubled in size. Fold the chocolate mixture and almond meal through the egg mixture and divide between the dishes.

Place on a baking tray and bake for 18-20 minutes or until risen and the centres are soft. Stand for 5 minutes. Dust with cocoa to serve.

*Find caramel filling in the baking aisle of the supermarket. If this isn’t available, use store-bought or homemade dulce de leche. Here in Australia, you can use Nestle Top ‘N Fill caramel, which is essentially dulce de leche.

*I divided the caramel and cake mixture between 6 1-cup ramekins, instead of only 4 1 1/2 cup ramekins.  After seeing the quantities of the mixtures, I felt that it could easily fit in 6 smaller ones.  In the end, I am glad I did this because the pudding is so rich and had it just been 4 ramekins, I don’t think we could have eaten the entire contents of the ramekin in one go!

 

Eventually I discovered what a “chocolate pot” actually was.  Lucky me!  Or not so lucky, depending on how you look at it!

Most of the recipes I saw for chocolate pots used raw eggs, so I put off making my own for a very long time.  Now that I’m more brave as I venture even further and further into the world of food (I’ve tried sardines now, I’ve made my own bread, I now eat my steak medium-rare instead of very-well-done, etc.) I put my fear of raw eggs aside (for the moment) because I found an amazing recipe for chocolate pots with salted caramel toffee.  It was the cover recipe for April’s delicious. magazine, and comes from one of my dessert-recipe heroes, Valli Little.

This is such an easy dessert to prepare, and it’s so elegant-looking.  Even better, it tastes incredible.  This is one for the serious chocolate-lover, and if you love salted desserts, this will be one of your favorites.

A couple of notes… the recipe included salted butter for the chocolate part of this dessert, but I didn’t have any salted butter, so I simply added a pinch or so of very finely ground sea salt in with my unsalted butter.

For the salted caramel toffee, the toffee should be a light golden color, not dark, so as soon as the sugar starts to color, watch it like a hawk, and perhaps take it off the heat just before it turns the color that you want.  I used Murray River pink sea salt flakes to sprinkle on the toffee.

The recipe also includes 1 tablespoon of brandy.  I don’t have brandy and didn’t want to buy brandy just for this; I used 1 teaspoon of my homemade vanilla extract instead.   You could use store-bought vanilla extract as well, just be sure it is the real extract and not the fake.  Also, be sure to only use 1 teaspoon of vanilla and not a tablespoon.

And of course, once again I must stress the importance of using the best quality chocolate that you can find and afford.  It truly makes a world of difference.  I used a Whittaker’s 50% chocolate bar for these.

Personally, I didn’t like the salted caramel toffee on its own, but when tasting it with a bite of the chocolate as well – WOW!  Words cannot describe it, it was just heavenly.

I originally made this last week, which is when I took these photos.  But I liked these chocolate pots so much that I made them again as a Mother’s Day dessert when I made lunch for my mother-in-law.  I did everything the same as before, except I crumbled the toffee up a bit more so that it resembled crumbs or small pebbles.  I preferred it that way, more so than the larger chunks of the toffee I used in the photos above!

So delicious!  This recipe is now one of my top favorites on my blog!

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I cooled myself, and others, off this week with a laughably easy-to-make salted caramel ice cream with bitter chocolate sauce and toasted pecans.  Don’t be scared about making ice cream if you haven’t got an ice cream maker – I don’t have one either!  A few months ago I described how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker, but guess what?  With this recipe, you don’t even have to take the ice cream out of the freezer every couple of hours to stir!

So how do you make this ice cream, you ask?  First, you go to the store and buy vanilla ice cream.  Then you come home, make some salted caramel sauce, then stir the caramel sauce into the softened store-bought ice cream, then freeze.  That was so easy, you just might have to read over that again!

This ice cream tastes delicious without the bitter chocolate sauce, but even better with it, so break out the good-quality 70% chocolate for this one.  For the chocolate sauce recipe, below I have posted the full recipe, but for my own personal use, I cut the recipe down to fourths.  I didn’t smother my ice cream with the sauce, so this was a perfect amount.  This sauce reminded me heaps of Hershey’s chocolate syrup (except more bitter), which was pretty neat; I’ve been a life-long fan of Hershey’s chocolate syrup!  If you used a sweeter chocolate, it might taste even more similar to Hershey’s.

I’m not very keen on nuts in my ice cream, but the toasted pecans tasted really nice with this ice cream.

Enjoy!

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As I’ve been busy with this other post, I realized I hadn’t posted a recipe here in nearly 10 days!  This is going to be a short, but sweet post about mini rustic salted chocolate and caramel tarts.

I decided to call these tarts “rustic” because I didn’t use a rolling pin to roll out the pastry shells – I flattened them with my hand (I was feeling too lazy to roll the pastry!) and also because I don’t have flan tins – I stuffed the pastry into a cupcake tin!  Both of these situations resulted in a not-so-perfect, or “rustic”, tart shell!

The caramel filling in these tarts isn’t just any caramel – it’s dulce de leche.  This is topped with a chocolate ganache, which is then sprinkled lightly with sea salt flakes.

So delicious!  You should store these in the refrigerator, but I found that they taste best at room temperature.  So let them sit on the counter for 15 minutes or so after taking them out of the refrigerator.

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In October 2009 there were two cupcake challenges that I participated in.  One was Iron Cupcake: Earth, where the theme was “music”; the other was Cupcake Hero, where the theme was “Halloween/pumpkin”.  I wanted to compete in both.  I also had a package of zombie hands and spiders cupcake toppers that I had ordered from Bake It Pretty.  Hm, how to put them to good use while coming up with an idea for both competitions….

This scary zombie cupcake was thus born.  I entered it into Iron Cupcake: Earth, and the song I chose to go with it was one of the best all-time songs ever, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.  It was perfect!  I entered it into Cupcake Hero as well.  It wasn’t very popular in the voting polls, but that’s okay because since posting it on my blog, this cupcake has received thousands of more views than any other recipe I’ve posted.  I’m surprised to see that this year, my zombie hand cupcake is once again the most popular recipe on my blog so far in October.  It was even listed in the St Louis River Front Times in the Best Twelve Halloween-Themed Cupcakes (at #9) on October 12, 2010.

Click here to view the original post with  more pictures and details.  To sum it up, the zombie hand cupcake is made up of a chocolate pumpkin cupcake filled with pumpkin buttercream.  It is frosted in a mound of chocolate frosting which is completely coated with finely crushed Oreos.  The “tombstone” is one half of an Oreo Fudgee cookie.

Okay, so that cupcake took care of my zombie hands, but I still had the spiders to use…

These are one of THE best cupcakes I have EVER had the pleasure of eating and making.  These little cuppies blew my mind.  The inspiration for the combination of flavors came from looking at one simple recipe for a caramel pumpkin pie.  A little later, I turned that idea into these pumpkin dulce de leche cupcakes.  They start with a pumpkin cupcake that is filled with dulce de leche.  They are frosted with dulce de leche buttercream and the spiderweb design is simply melted chocolate with a smidgen of shortening mixed in.  The spiders looked great on them.  And I entered these into Cupcake Hero as well, which won me a place in the throwdown with Samantha of Sweet Remedy – we ended up tying for first place!

I just can’t express in words how delicious these were, you just have to make them for yourself!

Now back in October of 2010, I still have the zombie hands and spiders, but I haven’t made any Halloween cupcakes this year.  I’m not even sure if I will at all.  Halloween isn’t so big in Australia, and making Autumn-themed food is a little out of season, as it is Spring here!  But, while I haven’t been inspired to make a Halloween cupcake, I was inspired to make an Autumn one.  I grew up in Indiana, I’ve spent a huge majority of my life there, so this time of year is naturally Autumn to me.  I wanted to make a contribution to Autumn-themed food in the Northern Hemisphere, even though I’m not there to enjoy the beautiful red, orange and yellow trees, the pumpkin pies and festivals…

So I bring you a little pumpkin cupcake with white chocolate frosting, drizzled in caramel sauce and topped off with a shard of walnut praline.  It’s the first cupcake picture I’ve ever taken outside.  It’s sort of a contrast in a way, to me, with this Autumn-themed cupcake, sitting on bright green grass.  Autumn should be chilly, the deciduous vegetation should be turning brown, but here in Sydney, it is Spring, and whatever was dormant over the Winter is now coming back to life in brilliant shades of green.  Beautiful, yes, but it’s completely backwards to me.  It’s something I will never get used to.

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My own basic recipe for French toast is below.  I usually pour some maple syrup over it, sometimes with bananas, if I have any.  Sometimes I even caramelize the bananas.  But last week, I had a heap of leftover salted butter caramel sauce from the popcorn ice cream I had made and wanted to do something special with, something that I could share with others.

An idea suddenly popped into my head one night.  I was craving French toast (which was not at all unusual for me!) and was thinking of ways I could jazz it up.  How about caramel French toast?  No… it would need a fruit to go with it… how about apples?  Yes, how about caramel apple French toast!

And you know what?  It was one of the best dishes I have ever eaten.  It was so good, that I found myself making it again the very next day.

Preparing the apples and French toast is easy; it’s the salted butter caramel sauce that could give some people a problem.  The original recipe for the caramel sauce comes from David Lebovitz, and it can be found at Almost Bourdain, where I found the recipe for the popcorn ice cream with salted butter caramel sauce.  It involves melting down 2 cups of sugar in a large Dutch oven, and cooking it until it becomes a dark caramel color.  This wasn’t as easy I had thought it was.  When I was making it, the edges of the sugar did not liquefy.  I had to stir it a little bit, and noticed that the bottom of the sugar was very, very golden already, so I started stirring and eventually got it to a really beautiful caramel color – it took a while though.

Next step is to take the melted sugar off the heat and stir in 1 2/3 cup heavy cream.  Apparently it’s supposed to bubble up furiously, so be very cautious at this stage.  But mine didn’t bubble at all!  Instead, after I added it, the caramel became a huge sticky chunk.  Hm, that’s not what was supposed to happen – I hoped that I hadn’t ruined it.  I returned it to the heat, and continued to stir, stir and stir (my arm was so tired by the end of this!) to melt that chunk back down.  And eventually it did melt down and I was so glad I hadn’t decided to throw it out!  The sauce was very smooth at this point, and to finish it off, I added 2 tablespoons of butter and 1/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt (or you can use fleur de sel if you’re lucky enough to have it) and stirred until I had this gorgeous-looking, drool-worthy caramel sauce.  It was simply to die for.

So, when all that is done, you can keep the sauce in the refrigerator for up to one month.  I had heaps leftover after the ice cream was all gone.

For the French toast, you’ll need to thinly slice up half of a sweet apple, I used Pink Lady.  But don’t slice them too thin, and you can peel the apple if you like (I didn’t).  Fry the apple slices with a bit of the caramel sauce until they’re tender and a little bit transparent.  Set aside, then make the French toast.  You can use my way, or you can use your way, doesn’t matter to me!

For my caramel apple French toast, I used a gourmet thick-sliced white bread.  You can use any type of bread you like.

Just looking at these pictures as I post them makes me wish I still had some caramel sauce leftover to make this French toast again!  :)

Caramel Apple French Toast

Salted Butter Caramel Sauce
adapted from Almost Bourdain
makes about 2 cups

Ingredients
2 cups (400 g) sugar
1 2/3 cups (400 g) heavy cream
2 tablespoons (30 g) salted butter
1/4 teaspoon fleur de sel or coarse sea salt (or to taste)

Method
Spread the sugar in an even layer in a large metal Dutch oven or casserole, at least 6 quarts (6 L). Set over moderate heat and cook without stirring, until the sugar near the edge just starts to liquefy.

Using a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, begin gently stirring, encouraging the melted sugar around the edges toward the center and delicately stirring up any sugar melting on the bottom as well. The sugar will start to look pebbly as it cooks, but keep going; it will melt completely as it turns amber.

Continue to cook until the sugar turns deep brown and starts to smoke. (Don’t worry about any large chunks of caramel.) The darker you can cook the sugar without burning it, the better the final sauce will taste. It’s ready when it’s the colour of a well-worn centime, or penny, and will smell a bit smoky.

Remove from heat and quickly stir in about a quarter of the cream. The mixture will bubble up furiously, so you may wish to wear an oven mitt over your stirring hand. Continued to whisk in the cream, stirring as you go to make sure it’s smooth. Stir in the butter and salt. Serve warm. If you like your sauce a bit thinner or less rich, add 1/4 cup (60 ml) water.

Storage: The sauce can be made up to one month in advance and kept refrigerated. Rewarm the caramel in a small saucepan over low heat or in a microwave.

French Toast
Adapted from myself
Serves 1-2

Ingredients
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1-2 teaspoons cinnamon, or to your taste
Dash of nutmeg
4 slices thick-sliced gourmet bread, or bread of your choice
unsalted butter, to grease pan
1/2 Pink Lady apple, thinly sliced, peeled if you like
1-2 tablespoons caramel sauce (recipe above), plus extra to serve

Method
Prepare egg mixture for the French toast by placing eggs, milk, cinnamon and nutmeg in a bowl.  Whisk until smooth.  Pour into a shallow dish and set aside.

Heat a frying pan over low-medium heat.  Add about 1-2 teaspoons (just eyeball it) unsalted butter and let it melt.  Add sliced apples and 1 tablespoon of the caramel sauce.  Stir to melt caramel sauce and coat the apples.  Cook the apples until tenter and a little bit transparent.  Add 1 teaspoon or more of caramel sauce if the apples are looking dry.  When done, remove from the pan and set aside (keep warm, if possible).

Do not clean the frying pan after cooking the apples – the cooked-on caramel will give a great flavor to at least your first batch of French toast.  Keep the pan on the heat and increase the heat a little bit.  Add 1-2 teaspoons (again, just eyeball it) of unsalted butter to the pan and let it melt.  Coat a slice of bread on both sides in the egg mixture, then place into the frying pan.  Cook until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes, then flip the bread over and cook the other side until golden brown.  Repeat with the rest of the bread, adding more butter before you add more bread to the pan.  You can cook two slices at a time or more, if your pan is big enough.  Set aside the cooked slices and keep warm while you cook the rest of the bread.

I like to add more cinnamon and nutmeg to my egg mixture after coating each slice of bread just to make sure the next slice has the same amount of spice!

To serve, arrange French toast on a plate.  Place caramel apples on top of the toast, then drizzle the whole pile with caramel sauce (not too much though, so it won’t be too rich!).  You may need to heat the caramel sauce in the microwave to make it pourable, if it’s been in the refrigerator.

Then enjoy!  If you make it, let me know how you like it!  :)

First of all, I don’t have an ice cream maker.  So why was I even thinking about making any kind of ice cream at all?  Well, because I had read an article in delicious. magazine on how to hand-churn ice cream.  Sure, it takes longer, but it’ll still work in the end.

“Hand-churn” is a bit misleading, actually, because you use an electric mixer, not your hands.  But basically the process is simple.  Make the ice cream according to your recipe.  When the recipe says to put the mixture in the ice cream maker, don’t (of course).  Instead, pour it in a large, shallow metal or plastic container, cover tightly with plastic wrap then place in the freezer for 1 1/2-2 hours or until the mixture is frozen on the edges.  Take it out of the freezer, transfer the ice cream to a bowl, and beat it with an electric mixer until smooth.  Return it to the freezer in the shallow container and repeat this process 2-3 times.  The process of beating the ice cream will prevent ice crystals from forming and ensure that you end up with a smooth, rich ice cream.

So that is how I made Ellie’s popcorn ice cream.

The salted butter caramel sauce is the best caramel sauce I have ever tasted.  It is also the first time I have made caramel without using a mix of sugar and water.  The recipe yields heaps of caramel sauce, so I had plenty leftover.  I’ve been making caramel lattes, caramel hot chocolates (for my daughter) and dipping chopped apples into the sauce.

Back to the ice cream though.  It was just brilliant.  The ice cream tasted exactly like popcorn, like a sweet, buttery popcorn.  It was irresistible and tasted just fine on its own without the caramel sauce.  The caramel sauce made it stunning, though.  I was amazed at how delicious it was, and I can definitely say that this is one of the best things I have ever made.

I drizzled my popcorn ice cream with very warm caramel sauce which melted the ice cream quite a bit, but that’s how I like it.  :)

Recipe Source
Popcorn Ice Cream With Salted Butter Caramel Sauce from Almost Bourdain

—
Just a reminder, 3 days until the first ever Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge secret ingredient is announced!  Come back on July 1 or subscribe by RSS for updates to find out what it’ll be! For more information on this brand new monthly cupcake challenge that I have started, read this page.

First of all, let me say that I’ve been planning these cupcakes for weeks.  It all started when I made the coconut pancakes with bananas, creme fraiche and caramel sauce last month, which was a recipe from Valli Little in delicious. magazine.  I loved those pancakes.  The combination of those flavors was like nothing else my tastebuds have ever experienced (probably mostly because I had never eaten creme fraiche!).  I started thinking that this flavor combination would taste great as a cupcake as well, and I haven’t made cupcakes in ages!

Over the past week I finally made up my mind as to how I would make these cupcakes.  I would use a banana cupcake recipe and stir sweetened shredded coconut into the batter.  The frosting would be something of my own creation, which turned out fabulous – creme fraiche whipped with confectioners’ sugar.  I made the same caramel sauce for these cupcakes as I made for the pancakes, except I replaced the thickened cream with coconut milk (I would have used coconut cream if I had had any).  This turned out fabulous as well, such a great flavor.

The assembly was easy.  The creme fraiche frosting was a perfect consistency and instead of using my piping bag I just used a Ziploc bag, snipped a corner off and piped a small mound on top of each cupcake.  I wanted the coconut caramel sauce to be concentrated in one spot, as opposed to just drizzling it over the frosting) so that it’d be able to be tasted and the only way I could think of to do this was to use a baby spoon to make an indentation on the very top of the frosting (see photo below this paragraph) and fill it with the coconut caramel sauce.  I then placed a slice of banana on top of the hole and gently pushed it down to cover the pocket of sauce (and threw on a bit of extra sauce just for the fun of it).

I’m very pleased with how these turned out.  They very closely match the flavor of those coconut pancakes, which is what I was aiming for.  The creme fraiche is slightly sweet with the addition of some confectioners’ sugar, yet still slightly tangy.  These cupcakes are best served on the day of baking due to the creme fraiche, as well as the use of fresh sliced bananas, which can turn brown quickly.  Be sure to place the sliced bananas on top of the cupcakes just before serving.

If you are interested in making these cupcakes yourself, I realize that the main problem you may have is in finding, or even affording, creme fraiche.  Creme fraiche is not available at every grocery store.  Luckily I can find it at my local store, but it comes at a price.  It is $6 for 250g.

Don’t despair though, you can make your own creme fraiche.  I haven’t done it myself, but it is so easy that I may just do this in the coming weeks.  You can find the instructions at joyofbaking.com.

I’d also like to point out that you can use whatever banana cake/cupcake recipe you prefer for these cupcakes.  I chose one of the first ones I came across that I had all the ingredients for!

And yes, you guessed right, I am watching too much MasterChef – look at those silly “artistic” blobs and smears of coconut caramel sauce on the plate!

On a sort of related note, I’d like to say how shocked I was to find the above chocolate-brown cupcake liners at my local grocery store!  This particular color of cupcake liner is very much sought after.  I bought a pack of 100 for $2.65 at Woolworth’s (in Sydney, Australia).  Awesome!

Anyway, here are the recipes, enjoy!

Banana Coconut Cupcakes
Adapted from Food Network
Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter (113g), softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 large ripe bananas, peeled, and mashed
1/2 rounded cup sweetened, shredded coconut
1 fresh banana, sliced, for decoration

Method
Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Line 1 (12-cup) muffin pan with paper cupcake liners.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, add the butter and the sugar. Beat with a hand-held mixer until combined. Add the sour cream and the vanilla extract. Slowly beat in the eggs, 1 at a time. Incorporate the dry mixture and wet mixtures together until thoroughly combined. Add the bananas and shredded coconut, being careful not to over mix. Using an ice cream scoop, fill each cupcake liner 3/4 way full. Bake in the preheated oven until the tops turn golden-brown and when a toothpick, inserted in the middle of the cupcake, comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the oven to a wire rack and let cool before frosting.

Creme Fraiche Frosting
Adapted from myself
Makes enough to frost 12 cupcakes, plus some leftover

Ingredients
250g creme fraiche
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

Method
Combine creme fraiche and confectioners sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Using the whisk attachment, whisk until thick and creamy, being careful not to overmix or it may become grainy. Use immediately.

Coconut Caramel Sauce
Adapted from delicious. magazine, November 2009
Makes about 2 cups, you’ll have plenty leftover

Ingredients
50g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1/2 cup firmly packed (100g) brown sugar
3 tablespoons honey
150ml coconut milk or coconut cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
Stir all ingredients in a pan over low heat to dissolve sugar, then simmer for 5 minutes, until thickened. Cool to room temperature before using on cupcakes, otherwise it will melt the frosting.

Use leftovers for pancakes, pies or ice cream.

Assembly
Pipe a small mound of creme fraiche frosting on top of each cupcake using a plain round tip, or a Ziploc bag. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Using a small spoon or butter knife, insert the tip into the very top of the frosting and turn in a circular motion while pushing down to make an indentation, or pocket, in the frosting (see photo above). Fill this pocket with cooled coconut caramel sauce. Place a piece of sliced banana firmly, but gently, on top of the pocket of sauce to completely cover it. Drizzle a little bit of the sauce on top of the banana. Serve immediately.

If not serving immediately, I suggest frosting the cupcakes, and making the indentation beforehand. Store in the refrigerator. When it is time to serve, fill the indentation with the sauce and place the banana on top. Once decorated, the cupcakes are best eaten immediately.

In this particular case, I was at the library browsing through the small selection of back issues of delicious. magazine.  That’s when I saw it.  A photo on the cover of November 2009′s issue that looked like a stack of Heaven with Heaven sauce and Heaven cream and a scattering of Heaven thrown on top.  I clutched on to it immediately.

What was actually on the cover was a beautifully arranged stack of 3 coconut pancakes. In between the layers was a hearty creamy dollop of creme fraiche and sliced bananas. From the very top of the stack of pancakes, caramel sauce drizzled down and scattered about the stack was shredded coconut and a dusting of icing sugar.

Oh. My. God. The photo looked fantastic. And then, I made it for myself.

My stack looks sort of similar to the photo on the cover, but it doesn’t have the elegance that the cover photo did!  But in the end, it didn’t matter to me one single bit what it looked like, because this is one of the most delicious stacks of pancakes I have ever eaten.  Ever.

Let’s start with the caramel sauce.  It is drop-dead easy to make – just throw the ingredients into a saucepan and simmer for a few minutes.  And it’s super sweet.  But that’s okay, because the tang from the creme fraiche balances everything out perfectly.

What you’ll find most time-consuming is that the eggs for the pancakes are separated.  The yolks are whisked along with the regular ingredients (milk, flour, baking powder, etc.) and the whites are whisked to stiff peaks then gently folded into the batter.  I used my stand mixer to do that because I don’t have the patience to do it by hand (unlike Jonathan on MasterChef Australia, have you seen that guy whisk egg whites?  Wow, he’s like a human KitchenAid!).

Anyway, you’ll get about 9 pancakes.  Divide them up into groups of three, layer with a dollop of creme fraiche and sliced bananas, give the caramel sauce a stir, then drizzle over the pancakes.  Lastly, dust the whole plate with icing sugar and sprinkle with shredded coconut.  And there you have it, one of the most divine, heavenly, indulgent dishes you could ever have the pleasure of eating.

My pictures just don’t do it justice, really.

Just a quick tip – I had to whisk my creme fraiche to get it all nice and creamy, otherwise it was firm, like a block of tofu.  It was the first time I have ever had creme fraiche.  I could never eat this stuff on its own, it packs quite a tangy punch for me, but it was perfect with these pancakes.

Coconut Pancakes With Caramel Sauce, Bananas And Creme Fraiche
Adapted from delicious. magazine, November 2009
Serves 3-4

Ingredients
4 eggs, separated
1 cup (250ml) coconut milk
1 cup (150g) plain flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder, sifted
3 ripe bananas
Unsalted butter, melted, to grease
Creme fraiche, icing sugar and shredded coconut, to serve

Caramel sauce:
50g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1/2 cup firmly packed (100g) brown sugar
3 tablespoons golden syrup
150ml thickened cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
For caramel sauce, stir all ingredients in a pan over low heat to dissolve sugar, then simmer for 5 minutes, until thickened. Set aside.

For pancakes, place egg yolks, coconut milk and a pinch of salt in a bowl and whisk until combined. Gently fold in the sifted flour and baking powder. Mash 1 banana and fold in to combine. In another bowl, whisk egg whites to stiff peaks, then fold into the batter.

Heat a non-stick frypan over medium-low heat and brush with butter. Using a heaped tablespoon of batter for each pancake, add 3-4 spoonfuls to pan and cook for 2-3 minutes each side until golden and cooked. Keep warm, while continuing with the remaining batter to make a total of 9 pancakes.

Slice remaining bananas. Arrange the pancakes in stacks on serving plates, alternating with banana slices and creme fraiche. Drizzle with caramel sauce, then dust with icing sugar and sprinkle with coconut.

To Valli Little, the creator of these pancakes – YOU ROCK!

Here’s the photo from the cover of the magazine that made me fall in love:

See what I mean?

And they are really yummy!  The cupcakes: they ended up more muffin-like in texture than I expected; they are soft and moist; they did not rise much while baking; they have an extreme banana taste; they don’t need frosting on them, they taste amazing.  The frosting: was a little bit daunting, seeing as how there are so many steps, but was actually quite easy as I went along; is actually a caramel Swiss meringue buttercream; is best prepared with a stand mixer; tastes beautiful.

Just a tip for the buttercream… the directions say to make the caramel first.  I had read on the comments section of the recipe that the caramel becomes hard by the time you add it to the buttercream, which is the very last step.  Of course you want the caramel to be cool, but you also don’t want to hard bits of caramel in your frosting.  What I did was stir the caramel occasionally as I went through the steps and kept it near, but not on, the burner I had cooked it on, to keep it a little bit runnier.  It was quite cool by the time I added it to the buttercream, but chunks of caramel still formed in the buttercream.  This was basically solved by just beating with the mixer at a speed higher and beating for a little bit longer, although there were still a few caramel chunks.  Personally, I don’t mind them, however – this caramel is simply dreamy!

And one other tip – the more caramel buttercream you put on the cupcakes, the better!  The banana and caramel combination is a lovely taste.

Recipes at marthastewart.com – banana cupcakes and caramel buttercream.