Day 12 (Post created on day 14)
Dish 11

Wow... it's only week number 2, and I am already having a hard time doing blog posts every day. :/ But in my defense, I had worked an 11 hour shift at work on Thursday... I got home and made my food, and then I went to bed. And then last night I was too tired to do anything. I came home and fell asleep for a couple hours on the couch. :/ But I still made all my dishes this week! (I am half way through my last one at this moment, but the blog post for it will probably be up tomorrow.)

Anyhow, on Thursday I made pastel de banano from Guatemala. Basically, it is just a different word for banana bread. But every time I searched "pastel de banano" on google, it came up as a Guatemalan recipe. So it must be a pretty typical Guatemalan dessert. And this recipe was a little bit different from any other banana bread that I've made before. And just to make things a little bit more difficult, I decided to make my pastel de banano in a bundt pan. (I'll show a picture of my pan later...)

For those of you who don't know, here is where Guatemala is located on the map. I only found out exactly where it was a couple weeks ago when I was talking with a friend and I thought that it was right above Brazil for some reason.... but nooooo... I was very wrong.

Apparently Guatemala is right below Mexico... :)

This was a really easy recipe, and I really liked the results... It made for a very moist cake.


Ingredients:

*1/2 cup butter

*1/2 cup sugar

*3 large ripe bananas. This was the first time that I have used ripe bananas as opposed to overripe brown bananas... I actually really liked it... It made the bread have a very distinct banana-y taste. :) Of course, it is handy to use up those overripe bananas for banana bread... so that would be fine, too.

*1/2 tsp salt

*2tsp. cinnamon

*1tbsp. lemon juice

*1/2tsp. nutmeg

*1 egg (Beat it slightly before using it.)

*1 1/2 cups flour

*2tsp. baking powder




*Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

*Melt your butter slightly. and mix it up with your sugar. You can use a mixer if you want... But I kind of have issues with using mixers. If I can help it, I'd rather not use a mixer, though... I don't like washing those mix-y blade things. Whatever you do, mix it all up until it is well blended.

*Mash up your bananas, and combine it with your sugar and butter mixture.

*Add the salt, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and egg.

*Add in your flour and baking powder.

In case you didn't know what a bunch of random combined ingredients looks like, here's a blurry visual for you.

*Ok, so this was my first time using a bundt pan. And just so that ya'll know, I'm not such an amazing baker that I already knew what a bundt pan was... I just saw this neat looking pan in our cupboard, and googled "What is the name of the funny shaped cake pan with ridges." Surprisingly, I actually found my answer. And I decided to use the bundt pan because it looked terrifying to me... but I don't really want to let a scary looking pan stop me from using it... So I faced my fear, and I feel like I will definitely be able to handle freaky pans from now on. (And anyhow... What's the worst that can happen? It may not come out quite right and it my cake may look all screwy... but it'll still taste good, which is the important thing!!!) :)

*So to use the bundt pan, you should butter it really REALLY well... make sure that you get every single nook and cranny buttered. I personally don't really like using spray because I feel like it doesn't always work the best... After it is sprayed, dump in some flour and shake your pan around to get every surface evenly floured.

It should look something like this... except not so blurry! ugh.

*Pour in your batter.

*Note: For a bundt pan this size, I probably should have done a double recipe... But that's ok... I'll know for next time now. :)

*Bake for 1 hour. (Or until you can insert a toothpick and it'll come out clean.)

Here is the finished product... see what I mean I should have done a double recipe... haha. It's a baby cake. :)

*Another tip for getting a stubborn cake out of a bundt pan, is to get a dish cloth wet with super hot water and place it underneath your upside down pan as soon as it gets out of the oven.

*Enjoy!

Thanks for reading! :)