Fried Bananas with Caramel and Cream
Ingredients
Sour Cream:
Whipping cream (I can't get unpasteurized, so I look for pasteurized as opposed to ultra-pasteurized. Get as much whipping cream as you want to make sour cream. I used a pint.)
1 package yogurt starter
Honey Caramel:
honey (between 1/2 cup and a cup)
1 stick butter
Fried Bananas:
bananas
more butter
Directions
Sour Cream: Several hours before, mix the yogurt starter into your whipping cream and pour the cream into your yogurt maker. I didn't head my cream up first. I wonder if I should have because it came out pretty runny in the end. I let mine yogurtize for 24 hours, mostly because I get waiting for it to solidify. Since it never did, I suspect 9 hours would have been plenty of time.
Honey Caramel: Put butter and honey into a small sauce pan on medium low heat. Stir occasionally. I used a candy thermometer to watch that I didn't heat it too high. I tried to keep it at 240°F or below because I didn't want it to get too hard. Because we used it while it was still warm for cooking, it was nice and pourable. While we watched Grimm it hardened up to a chewy consistency, like a soft candy. I probably should have kept the temp a little lower.
Fried Bananas: I put 1/4 cup of butter into the pan, but it was almost entirely gone by the time I got to the last of the bananas. An important tip I learned is not to cut the bananas too thin. They just get ooey and gooey as they cook and before you know it they won't turn over because they're just a spot of mush in the butter. It's better to cut the banana in half crosswise (because it's going to break there anyway so you might as well just get it over with) then cut it in half lengthwise so it's a little skinnier. Then fry it up in the butter till it's golden or just starting to brown up a bit.
Fried Bananas with Caramel and Cream: After the bananas are slightly browned, pile them up on the plate, put a nice size dollop (or dribble) of sour cream off to the side, and then drizzle caramel over the top. Yum!
I think everyone went back to get more cream for their bananas, but I didn't see anyone go back for more caramel, which I take as a good sign. We're not craving the sugars so much as the contrast of the sour cream with the naturally sweet bananas.
This is the right amount of butter, but the bananas were cut up way too small.
This is the right size for the bananas, but it took me so long to figure this out, that by this time the butter was all used up. I should have added more.
This is the honey and butter early on. It's pretty much butter colored.
And this is the honey and butter as it was starting to caramelize.
It's starting to get a nutty brown color now.
And here's a picture from my walk this morning because it has cows and I don't think I've posted a picture of cows yet on this website. Every website needs at least one cow picture.