Posts Tagged: Banana Treats

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20
Aug 09

DO. WANT. (Can’t. Have.)

Retail price is about a buck, if you can find one.

This is amazing. Banana Split in a Kit, and from Blue Bunny, the maker of ice cream novelties like the Bomb Pop and Power Puff Girls bars.

Awesomeness.

Awesomeness.

And this is even more amazing  - you use the pre-packaged work of genius as raw material for an even more splendid creation:

The official name for this product is the “Personals Banana Split.” Blue Bunny is a midwestern brand, mostly, though we get their fantastic ice cream sandwiches on the west coast (see the note, below.) But when I did a search for retailers offering this unbelievably exciting item – my radius was 100 miles – I got this heartbreaking message:

bluebunny

I guess 387 miles is not considered "a store near you."

I’m sad. In fact, the locator indicates that there’s not a single store selling this product in the entire state of California. I checked Nevada, too. I didn’t get lucky until Utah, where Blue Bunny has a manufacturing plant.

Now, that note: I applaud Blue Bunny’s innovation one zillion percent, but I have a question concerning the three-flavored  and strangely-spelled “Neapolitan” variety of their ice-cream sandwiches. What on earth made you guys put strawberry as one of  the outside flavors? This is nuts, and here’s why. Strawberry ice cream sucks. Only your weird uncle likes it. Chocolate (which appears on the BB sandwich’s other flank) and vanilla (the middle flavor) are rightly preferred. The issue is one of sequence. With the hated, not-fruit fruit on the exterior, the consumer is stripped of a crucial choice: whether or not to eat their favorite flavor first or last! If you like vanilla, you’ve got to eat it first. If you like chocolate, you’ve got to eat it last. But if strawberry were at the sandwich’s center, where it should be, you could decide, and as a bonus, you’d have the remaining “good” flavor left as a finale to wipe out the residual strawberry yuck. Am I wrong?)

But really, I don’t want to be seen as ragging on the Blue Bunny. I just wish I could get one of those Personal Banana Splits somewhere less than a day’s drive away.

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8
Aug 09

Video taste test: Ugandan banana gin

Waragi is to Ugandans what tequila is to Mexicans, vodka is to Russians, and Diet Coke is to Sarah Palin. I bought a bottle during a stopover at Entebbe airport, and conducted a video taste test when I got to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I’d been in the backcountry under rough conditions for a couple of weeks when I recorded this, which might explain my enthusiasm.


The stuff is rotgut – which isn’t meant to diminish the importance of bananas in Uganda, which are used not just for hooch, but  as a primary source of calories. People would starve without them, and the fruit is threatened by disease, making the nation ground zero for banana research.



Still, you could run a moped on this stuff. Which is more than you could say for Diet Coke.

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27
Jul 09

Gourmet banana splits are possible.

Fifteen bucks is a good deal, they say, because you can split it with a friend.

Unlike the last native-New Yorker banana split I reviewed, this one actually looks unbelievably, beautifully, completely awesome (though being a native New Yorker myself, I still prefer Carvel.) Still, you pay NYC prices for this masterpiece: $14.95. The scoop – har – on this (as well as the picture)  came from the serious eats website.

Sugar Rush: Banana Split at Blue Ribbon Bakery | Serious Eats : New York.

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13
May 09

No ice cream? NOT a banana split!

The New York Times has been very kind to me, but one has to say that a banana split where:

  • There’s no strawberry, pineapple, or chocolate sauce.
  • There’s something called “ganache.”
  • There are no nuts.
  • The dish is not “boat” shaped.
  • AND ICE CREAM IS FREAKIN’ OPTIONAL!!!!

has to be a bunch of hooey and snobbery. Get it together. Really.

Here’s NYT’s “banana split,” which is suitable only for fellows like the gentleman pictured below.

.snob
Snob.

Here’s the real deal at BananasWeb, and the kind of fella who’d enjoy such a treat.

Baby Gorilla. Not snob.
Bananas — 1 Comment
22
Apr 09

Video Review: Pudding Dreams. Shattered.

Banana pudding, reviewed on video by people with way too much time on their hands. “People,” of course,  meaning me.

If there were any place on earth I would rather live than sunny Los Angeles, it would the Kozy Shack. In this magical locale, the world’s most delicious dessert treats are made: they’re all-natural, always fresh and creamy, and available in at your friendly local grocery store.

The Kozy Shack company is based in Hicksville, Long Island, New York – just a few miles from where I grew up – and I’ve been eating gorging myself on their products since I was a kid. The company’s trio of rice puddings – original, cinnamon-raisin, and the richer, more vanilla-y European-style – are the supermarket category’s equivalent to Haagen Dazs ice cream. They put the crap that Jell-O foists on the American public to shame (the General Foods subsidiary recently dropped an ad circular in my mailbox that described its product as “contemporary.” Creepy.)

Kozy Shack has been expanding lately. Seasonal flavors like pumpkin and peach have been added. My vegan friends love the company’s soy-based products. On the other hand, I don’t know what to make of the “probiotic” SimplyWell brand extension, which features flavors like Green Tea and Lemon Chai.
I know this blog is supposed to be about bananas, but to my most-beloved dudes at Kozy: Probiotic? Why are you stooping to the level of yogurt? You’re better than that, and you know it. I’m also suspicious of some of the other products recently released under the Kozy Shack label – a line of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, and frozen desserts like tiramisu cups and eclairs. Here’s the problem: the rice pudding bar set by the original Kozy line reaches celestial heights. Unless those other products come close – very close – they’re going to be disappointing to consumers, and will make the whole Shack a less appealing piece of culinary real estate.
That applies even to other pudding varieties, which brings us to bananas. Kozy Shack’s earlier foray into the minefield of banana pudding – I call it that because the treat is so good when it is good, and so awful when it isn’t -  was a disastrous recreation of a New Orleans staple called Bananas Foster. The real thing features about forty pounds of butter per serving, along with a pirate schooner’s worth of rum and sugar, mixed with bananas and banana liqueur, set on fire, and poured over vanilla ice cream. Trying to capture this in a hooch-and-fire free plastic supermarket cup was a singularly bad idea.

This time around, the pudding experts from Strong Island have kept it simpler. Good idea. But the results are still less-than-perfect. The ingredients list serves as the first warning: there are “natural flavors,” but bananas themselves are never mentioned. The product is all-natural, which is good, but the taste just isn’t right.  See the attached video report, which includes my girlfriend’s off-camera opinion. She is a pudding expert and you can absolutely trust her.
Bummer. I was rooting for this one. But still, the company is doing incredible things with two of the world’s other staple foods: the sublime rice varieties, and the equally splendid tapioca (aka manioc, aka casava, aka yuca, and more than a dozen other names worldwide) rocks, as well. So all is forgiven – and I encourage a third try. Hint: real bananas, possibly in chunks (tough to do, I know, given the fruit’s perishability.) And it needs to be much, much creamier. The current version is way too gel-like.
Oh, and there’s definitely one Kozy marketing move that I absolutely buy into: the company’s sponsorship of the most lovable, awesome baseball team in human history.
UPDATE: A couple of readers have written in with their own Kozy Shack banana variants – which involve taking either the tapioca or one of the existing rice varieties, slicing bananas into it, and mixing it up with Nilla wafers (or this organic alternative.) Excellent idea.
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10
Aug 08

Make all of these banana puddings

Then invite me to your house. Traditional, with Nilla Wafers, here.  Mexican, with TORTILLA CHIPS, in a foofy version, here, and a basic version, here.

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4
Feb 08

Banana Splits of the World

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DAIRY QUEEN: “Delicious DQ soft serve covered in luscious strawberry, pineapple, and chocolate toppings, with whipped topping and nestled between a sweet banana.” DQ’s advantage is that it is ubiquitous; her highness has outposts in nearly every U.S. state, and internationally, too (I ate at one in Beijing.)The ice cream is special – no other soft-serve tastes like DQ – and that makes the split nearly perfect. Price: $3.00. Rating: four of five. Royal hint: go for the banana split blizzard instead – all the ingredients, mixed into a cup. Locations: Almost 6,000.

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CARVEL’S “BANANA BARGE”: No official description. But the picture speaks for itself. The best quality soft-serve in the bunch, but just two scoops/swirls. Unconventional name, unconventional presentation, but it works. Price: $6.00. OW! Stars: Five of five. Locations: 500 (recently opened several stores in Los Angeles.)

banana_split.jpg

BASKIN-ROBBINS: “Delight in a traditional treat with your favorite ice cream flavors, two banana slices, crowned with chopped almonds, whipped cream and three cherries.” About as close to the classic banana split as you can get. But traditional hard ice cream suffers in the age of Haagen-Dazs. Rating: two and a half of five. Price: about $5.00.

TASTEE-FREEZ: Claims to have invented soft-serve. I’m not so sure. But this is high-quality stuff – almost as creamy as Carvel. R ating: four of five. Price: $3.00 About 100 locations, with the most in California, Texas, and Illinois. One in Alaska.

Fosters Split.tiff

FOSTER’S FREEZE: Weird, yucky, yellow ice milk. This California chain has passed its glory days, though you can find them in – and this is kind of yucky, too – hybridized “El Pollo Loco” stores. Plus, the picture is BOGUS: look at the glass dish. Price: $3.00 Rating: one of five. Locations: About 40.

CULVER’S: This midwestern chain features not ice cream, but creamier frozen custard (whole milk, egg yolks.) Don’t forget to eat ten or so of the chain’s “Butter Burgers,” which taste exactly the way they sound: smooth as meat. Rating: SIX (!!!!) of five. Price: $4.00. Locations: 350.

SONIC DRIVE IN: Another middle-of-America chain. Best known for 1950s-style car hop service, the ice cream is pretty undistinguished (note that the regal sundae is positioned behind some DQ Blizzard-like treat in the picture.) Some stores sell deep-fried pickles. Rating: two of five (add two points if you’re pregnant.) Prices: $3.00. Locations: 3,000.