Dessert

I’m always on the quest for ways to use black bananas. We have this problem where our grocery store gets really really green bananas, and they seem to go from deep green to black, without a middle stage. We really should stop buying them like that, but it’s a hard habit to break. For us, bananas are a staple of every grocery trip.

This last trip, I also bought strawberries for a separate recipe I was making that will appear in the coming weeks. I only ended up using a few of them though. Now, strawberries are not going to go to waste in this house, but when StumpleUpon drops you on a recipe for Strawberry Banana bread, and you just happen to have black bananas and strawberries in your kitchen at the same time, I think the Universe is trying to tell you something.

Sometimes, the inspiration for a recipe comes from the most bizarre of places. The other day, I was reading a free novel I’d downloaded to my Kindle (I adore my Kindle!) and the baker in the book was brainstorming recipe ideas. One of the recipes the author played around with involved cashews and a chocolate base cookie, but I thought I could take it one step further, turning cookies into brownies, and adding nutella into the mix.

I realized as I was thinking out the recipe that I haven’t posted a brownie recipe to this blog since I started it. In fact, Butterscotch Brownies were the first recipe I posted to my blog, back on May 20th, 2008.

I haven’t been as excited to post anything to this blog in a long time as I am these Movie Theatre Cookies. They started out as just an inkling of an idea when James and I went to the cinema to see Tron: Legacy (visually beautiful, but not so much the plot).

I don’t know about you, but I can’t go to the movies without popcorn. With butter. It makes me sad to sit through a film without it. Oh, I know it’s horrible for you. I really do. But I love it. James prefers to have sweets when we go to the film. A “Super Squishy” (ICEE) or some Raisinets. And that’s where this idea first popped up. James got Raisinets that day we saw Tron. And he said to me, “Wouldn’t Raisinets be awesome in cookies?”. Yes, yes they would be.

It happens to the best of us, with the best of intentions: black bananas. Some weeks James and I go through a bunch of bananas in record time. Other weeks, we’re left with 3 or 4 getting well past their prime. I don’t know about you, but there’s only so much banana bread I can bake! That’s where these Banana Ginger cookies come in.

Despite their name, Mexican Wedding Cookies are popular in San Antonio for more than just weddings. In fact, I’ve long thought of these delicious little morsels of win as a Christmas cookie, not a wedding one.

Now, there are lots of different versions of this little cookie. In fact, I think Russian Tea Cakes are pretty much identical, bar one thing: the nuts. Russian Tea Cakes call for Walnuts. Mexican Wedding Cookies call for Pecans.