I mentioned a while back that I could no longer find Kellogg's Nutri-Grain bars at any of the supermarkets in my area, and several of you left comments and sent e-mail saying you couldn't find them either. I'm pretty sure they're not being made anymore (though Nutri-Grain does have various breakfast pastries). Now I think I've found a great substitute.

Quaker has just released their own Breakfast Bars (so new they're not on their site yet), and in the same flavors that the Nutri-Grain bars came in, blueberry and banana muffin! The verdict? They're quite good. They're smaller and not as moist as the Nutri-Grain bars were. These have a slightly tougher, toastier look and feel to them, but I like them a lot.

Note to Quaker: don't discontinue these! Or, if you're going to, give me a heads up so I can buy several cases from you. Thanks.

This cake is fit for The King - and we're not talking about the Burger King. We're talking about Elvis, who was known for his love of fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Since it was a Southern boy, we can safely assume that he wouldn't have turned down a decadent chocolate cake with lots of whipped cream, either. This Elvis Devil's Food Cake was baked by Alice Q. Foodie.

The devil's food cake layers are very easy to make and provide a base that could be used for many different cakes. The two layers can be made in advance, but the rest of this cake must be finished right before serving. For assembly, heavy cream is whipped to peaks and sweetened, then spread on top of the base layer. The whipped cream is then topped with a layer of sliced banana and little dollops of peanut butter, before the top layer is laid into place and finished with more whipped cream. AQF decorated the finished product with more banana slices and peanut butter, making sure each slice of the 9-inch cake would have one.

Either I don't eat out enough or must not pay much attention to the dessert menu, because even though I live in LA, I had no idea that banana cream pie was a city-wide obsession.

The third possibility here is that the reason I don't know about the trend is that it isn't a trend at all, just the New York Times' assumption that banana cream pie is a fad based on the presence of banana desserts at some So Cal bakeries and diner-type restaurants.

So, I'm not going to vouch for its trendiness in restaurants, but the rich, whipped cream-topped pies can be quite satisfying if you like cream/pudding-based pies, so the NYT's piece could come in handy if you are in LA and decide to go out looking for some. Clementine Bakery, Jin Patisserie, House of Pies and Apple Pan are all mentioned, but the Times' top pie pick is from Pie 'n Burger, in Pasadena. A similar recipe is included if you're of a mind to try baking your own version of the pie at home, although you would need a shortening-based crust (not a graham cracker one) to get even closer to the Pie 'n Burger recipe.

Although this photo of Fancy Toast's banana bread is a good one, it's not the look of the loaf that makes it appealing. The unassuming exterior hides a secret and that secret is booze. Erinelle turned an otherwise ordinary loaf of banana bread into a deliciously grown-up treat by adding a hearty dose of rum-soaked raisins to her banana bread batter. The recipe she used comes from Nigella Lawsons's popular cookbook How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, which is full of decadently satisfying recipes that are designed to be very do-able for the home chef. Since all that really distinguishes this bread from other banana breads is the use of the boozy raisins, it would be easy to make the addition to your own personal favorite banana bread recipe if you didn't want to use Nigella's. You could even toss them into muffins or cookies for a little bit of a change there, as well.

Bananas are wonderful, versatile fruits, not to mention that they're the most consumed fruit in the world and the fourth most consumed crop after rice, wheat and maize. This doesn't mean that all uses for bananas are good ones. For example, take Rachael Ray's Banana Hot Buttered Rum recipe. The drink uses some of the classic ingredients found in normal hot buttered rum - butter, rum, sugar - but instead of cream, it uses banana liqueur. This is an unusual twist and a hot banana drink not entirely unappealing - until you add banana slices to the drink. This just seems like a bad idea. Bananas are noted or adding a creamy texture to drinks, which is why they're so popular in smoothies and milkshakes, but they're not know for being attractive when exposed to air or heat. Who wants to see a brown banana piece in or on their drink?

I'll stick to smoothies, where the bananas are blended in, not left in chunks. If you want to try RR's recipe, however, read on:

It looks like the good people at Reese's have been inspired by the King - Elvis Presley. The new limited edition Reese's have a two-layered filling of peanut butter and banana creme, in a candy rendition of Elvis's favorite peanut butter sandwich. Even if you don't really think too much of Elvis, any combination of peanut butter, bananas and chocolate is bound to be a good one because the elements work well individually, as well as when put together. Junk Food Blog says that they are now available in the US, but gives no indication of where they might have been sold before. The Reese's website doesn't mention them at all. I have yet to see any in my local stores. Were they first released near Graceland? If anyone has had the chance to taste this creation, let us know how they turned out in the comments.

I noticed a comment where someone said they were looking for Bonomo's Turkish Taffy. It is a chewy, long-lasting bar candy bar that popped up around World War II and was popular not only because it tasted good, but because it was inexpensive and most kids could afford it. "Turkish Taffy" was not taffy, nor was it Turkish. The "taffy" was really a type of nougat, a mixture of egg whites and corn syrup that was whipped together and then baked. The baking gave the product a distinctively hard texture, so that it could be broken into shards if kept cold, but melted into a wonderful chew in your mouth. The original flavor was vanilla, but by the 1960s it also came in chocolate, strawberry and banana. In 1980, the company sold to Tootsie Roll Industries and, in 1989, production ceased.

Bonomo's is no more, but Old Time Candy carries a similar product called French Chew. It is long lasting, chewy, melts in your mouth and shatters when cold, just like Bonomo's did. It also comes in the same four flavors as the original product. Since we can't get the original for a side-by-side comparison, it's hard to say if they're really the same, but they are very similar candies, so you won't go wrong with the French Chew if you're looking for a taffy fix.

If you eat a brownie that has some banana in the batter, can you count that has a healthy snack? Unfortunately, a bit of fruit is not enough to push an otherwise rich treat into the realm of health food, but it does mean that you're getting a few extra nutrients with your dessert - and we're willing to latch onto anything that gives us an excuse to try out these Banana, chocolate and pecan brownies from Johanna, at the Passionate Cook. The recipe is a great way to use up overripe bananas without making banana bread, the typical fate of such fruits. The bananas are combined with a good amount of butter and dark chocolate, as well as eggs, sugar and flour. Pecans are added in to give the brownies some texture and a pleasing crunch, and once baked, the already decadent treats are drizzled with dark and white chocolate.

Even with the bananas and the antioxidants from the dark chocolate, it's still not health food - but it never hurts to pretend, especially if you want a second slice.

Cornell University's new president was honored with his very own ice cream flavor from the Cornell Dairy as part of a tradition that the campus-run dairy started several years ago. The new flavor is called Banana-Berry Skorton, a blend of chocolate ice cream with banana and raspberry swirls. The previous presient's flavor was known as Inauguration Swirl, and featured a mocha swirl in chocolate ice cream.

One would assume that they are taking into account the flavors that the presidents like - after all, a vanilla ice cream fan wouldn't want a chocolate ice cream. If you could choose to have an ice cream named after you, what flavor would you want it to be? Mint chocolate chip? Cannoli? Cookie dough?

A banana chip is a thin, deep-fried slice of banana. Once fried, the slightly sweet chips are crisp (often bordering on rock-hard) and oily. Because they look like fruit, some people mistake these for a healthy snack, but they are far from good for you. A one ounce serving has about 150 calories and 9.5 grams of fat, almost all of it saturated.

On Trader Joe's top 100 list, they included something called banana crisps. I only tried them recently, since nearby Trader Joe's seemed to be perpetually sold out of them. Unlike the traditional deep-fried diet disasters, these chips are baked. They are ultra-thin and akin to an ordinary potato chip in both looks and flavor, and actually make a great substitute for regular potato chips because they don't taste very banana-like at all, though they are slightly sweet rather than salty. Best of all, each one ounce (2/3 cup) serving has only 40 calories and 1 gram of fat.

[Banana crisp image via Trader Joe's Fan, which has a great review of them, too)