Culinary Flop

When I said I planned to share my culinary successes and failures with the world, I hoped to have a few more successes under the proverbial belt before having to talk about failure. Unfortunately, that was not meant to be. Today I experienced an epic and public banana treat failure.

This afternoon there was a pot-luck luncheon at Eric's office. I was invited to hang out with the JAGernauts and the rest of the crew to celebrate and and say thank you to one of Eric's coworkers who is leaving the legal office. An invitation to a pot luck used to be intimidating, but over the past couple of months, I've felt a little more confident about my ability to prepare decent eats. Thus, for this particular shin-dig, I decided to experiment.

I recently found a recipe for PB 'Nana Cream Bites, which are slices of banana with a schmear of peanut butter on top, dipped in chocolate AND THEN frozen. Delicious. I have indulged in frozen, chocolate-covered bananas in the past and loved them. The addition of peanut butter could do nothing less than elevate these treats from the delicious to the divine. The recipe sounded easy enough, which I was excited about. My plan was to assemble the bites after dinner and stick them in the freezer overnight. And maybe sneak a few chocolate chips along the way, too. I grabbed my ingredients and got to work. As I spread the little dollop of peanut butter onto each banana slice, a memory from childhood came to me. 

When my sister and I were little, we had a Minnie & Me cookbook that we loved to experiment with (and I said I had no training). One morning, we really wanted to surprise our parents with breakfast, but we weren't allowed to make any of the recipes that required use of the oven without parent supervision. We thought we'd struck gold when we found the one breakfast-appropriate recipe that was no-bake, no-fry, no-boil. Peanut Butter Balls! Essentially, it was a recipe that called for peanut butter and raisins to be mixed together, formed into little balls, and rolled in dry oatmeal flakes (or at least that's how I remember it). Sounds delicious, right?

We worked hard and we worked fast and we completed our task before our parents woke up. When they walked downstairs into the kitchen, they were surprised to find the peanut butter.....smeared all over the cabinets, counter tops, sink, faucet, floor, our faces, the silverware, you name it. You name it, it had peanut butter on it. They were a good mom & dad, though, because they simply smiled and said, "Oh, thank you so much" and picked up the balls for a taste.

They even went on to rave about how delicious they were, which couldn't have possibly been true. And even if it was true, would you have been able to enjoy balls of peanut butter that you knew had been rolling around in the gooey, grubby hands of little children? Like I said, they were really good parents. 

I chucked to myself as I thought about that day because by the time I finished dolloping the peanut butter on my bananas, my kitchen looked pretty peanut butter-coated itself. Either peanut butter is eternally messy or this kid never learned to be a tidy chef. My guess is its a combination of both.

Chocolate too thin on left; chocolate thickened on right, but not enough

I finished with the peanut butter and out came the chocolate...talk about mess! The recipe called for a half cup of chocolate chips to be mixed with a quarter cup of milk and then microwaved. I did just that, dipped two banana bites and could see (clearly) that the consistency wasn't right. I added more chips, which thickened it up, but it probably could and should have been even thicker. That stuff was dribbling and drizzling all over the place. AND it stuck to practically everything except the bananas! It took quite a bit of time and patience, but I am willing pleased to report that the 'nanners were nestled in the freezer less than two hours after the whole ordeal started (hey now, I made three bananas worth of treats even though the recipe only called for two...and that means I averaged 1.5 bananas and hour). 

I had chocolate left over so I drizzled it on top hoping to thicken up the chocolate coating.

They sat in the freezer from about 11pm to 9am. How did they turn out? Well, the chocolate never completely froze. Even by morning, it was still gooey. I think next time (yes, there will be a next time) I will omit the milk all together (or use a higher fat milk). I've made chocolate bark from chocolate chips in the past and have never had a problem getting the melted chips to freeze. In a last-ditch effort to save the treats, I transferred the bites to a ceramic tray (hoping the chilled tray would help) and put them back in the freezer until it was time to leave for the pot luck. 

At the beginning of the potluck, the bananas tasted great despite the fact they were a little melty, a little messy, and a lot ugly. However, within only about 10 minutes of being out of the freezer, the bananas started to turn from frozen to mush, too. Disaster. I ended up having to serve them with toothpicks. Even with toothpicks, it was hard to get the bites from the tray to the plate. Most people opted just to go straight from tray to mouth. Right there at the buffet table. The flavor was still pretty good, but the texture was one hundred percent wrong.

I was ever-so-slightly embarrassed and it may be a while before I experiment with new recipes for pot lucks again. But I will try this recipe again. Sans milk. I am determined to make this one work! Stay tuned.

And you know what? Perfection is overrated, anyway.