Challenge from the Dinner Spinner

So, I got my first iPod Touch a couple of weeks ago, and I simply adore it! I immediately spent hours in the app store while it was charging to find cool apps to add to it, forgetting the fact that it's an MP3 player (yeah, I have yet to put all my songs on there).


One of the cooler apps I put on there was compliments of All Recipes.com, one of my favorite recipe sites. It's called the Dinner Spinner (see it here: http://allrecipes.com/Features/More/iPhone.aspx). So with one click, you are on the home page. With the flick of the wrist in a shaking motion, it's shuffling through three categories: dish type, ingredients, and ready in. The first time I played with it, the first thing that came up for dish type was dessert, ingredients was fruit, and for the ready in, it said "slow cooker". Now I'd cook everyday in my slowcooker if I could find enough recipes to do it in, I really enjoy the freedom it gives you. And I've never met a slowcooker recipe my family didn't love. Literally, throw the ingredients in, cut it on, watch tv, play with your kids, check email, talk on the phone, go out to the stores, etc., and hours later, you got a delicious meal! So I digress...



So this app is suggesting it can find a fruit dessert recipe that can be done in a slow cooker. My first thought is "Yeah right" so I click "view matches" to see what it had. So to my amazement, the recipe it shows is a Slow Cooker Bananas Foster. WHAT! Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE bananas foster. Pretty much any dessert with bananas, I'm all for it. So I knew immediately, I'd have to try this dessert. The modified recipe is below (I say modified, cause the original says to use 1/4 cup rum, and I didn't want to use rum and I added 2 tablespoons of extra butter to compensate for the no rum factor)



Slow Cooker Bananas Foster

• 4 Bananas peeled and sliced


• 6 tablespoons of butter, melted


• 1 cup of packed brown sugar


• 1 teaspooon of vanilla extract


• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon


• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts


• 1/4 cup of shredded coconut

So I grabbed my crockpot out the pantry, which I have yet to use since moving into our new home. It's a bit old school; I recieved it as a wedding gift when we got married in 2000. Check it out, lol:

I highly recommend, for any cook, to have a couple of cutting boards of different sizes on hand. I use this one for cutting fruit and vegetables, etc. Even though I have granite countertops, which is supposed to be safe to cut on, I'm not taking any chances, so I use my small cutting board to slice up the bananas.

I then placed all my ingredients in the cooker. The recipe suggests adding the coconut and nuts at the last 30 minutes, but knowing what I had to do that evening, I knew I wasn't going to be able to pay attention and remember to put it in. I hope it didn't affect the outcome too much, but we'll get to that later...

At this point, it already smelled really good. You can check out my ipod with the recipe sitting next to my crockpot, lol. So I stirred it around, and then cut it on. It took roughly 2 hours and half hours to cook to the point where I was happy with it. The recipe says to put cooker on high and cook for two hours and ten minutes. An extra twenty minutes wouldn't seem to make that big of a difference, but it tasted a bit thicker and looked more cooked after I checked it the second time.

Easy enough right? I know it doesn't look too appealing on the picture, but my kitchen area smelled so good from it, I couldn't wait to taste it. So I just served it with two scoops of ice cream and dug in!

First of all, the combination of hot and cold (this was served immediately after I turned my crockpot off) is already very good. So that immediately excites me, lol. But the sauce of this dessert, along with the banana-nut-coconut combination, was really good! I was very surprised! The only thing that I questioned was the consistency of the bananas. They weren't soft like I imagined they would be, but rather, stiff on the outsides and soft on the insides. I used very green bananas, so maybe I should've used riper ones (but that's all I could find at my grocery store). Also, I don't know if the rum factors in when cooking the bananas more, but I thought my son would try it and I'm nursing, so I was fearful of putting the rum in it. Also, my liquor box is still packed up, so I couldn't access my rum very easily, lol.

So next time, I will probably try to follow the recipe to the tee, and pick better bananas. I really enjoyed my version, so I will definitely try it again! Unfortunately, I was the only one able to taste-test it; my whole family was knocked out sleep. I did have leftovers of course, so I'll have to update how the reheating goes.

Oh, by the way, be careful eating this delicious recipe. According to the info on my dinner spinner, one serving is 541 calories! It has 31 mg of cholesterol, 84 g of carbohydrates and 20.7 g of fat! Ouch! Still worth it though! LOL