"banana" news and stories

Try saying this three times fast: Chocolate Mousse, Salted Caramel Ganache, Peanut and Banana Caramel Tart. As difficult as it may be to say, it looks like a breeze to eat (three times fast, of course).

Baked by Aran at Cannelle et Vanille, these diminutive beauties have almost as many complex layers as the Earth's surface. The chocolate shells are filled with a layer of banana caramel with peanuts, another layer of triple chocolate salted caramel ganache, and then crowned with a cloud of chocolate mousse.

The whole is garnished with cocoa powder, chocolate shavings and chopped peanuts. Eat. Await indescribable bliss.

[Via Canelle et Vanille]

Have you ever forgotten about a birthday, or tried to whip up a birthday cake at the last minute? It can be daunting -- especially if you're a from-scratch baker who refuses to indulge in boxed cake mix and tins of frosting. However, if you like bananas, I have just the thing -- Banana Cake, which I found over at Honey and Jam, and came from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. After a few adjustments -- one bundt pan rather than two pans (needs more time to cook), and no "carmel" bananas in the middle or on top -- the result was an incredibly moist and delicious banana cake with a crisp exterior.

Since my whipping cream had mysteriously gone bad a few weeks early, I hunted for a caramel sauce I could pour on top, and settled on this recipe over at Metro. (It's a good thing I didn't notice what site I was on until now, since I've been a bit irked with the store's quality since Dominion became Metro and the selection went down the tubes.) Anyway... It's not the best sauce recipe out there -- but it's a tasty one.

According to the recipe, you're supposed to end up with this mixture that needs to be pulverized in a blender to get smooth. Mine was smooth from the get-go, and actually a bit too watery, so I had to wait about 40 minutes for it to thicken. But the result was perfect for this cake -- a nice sugary rush to balance the intense and tasty banana. Oh, perfect once the rum was added, to give it a little something extra. (Actual rum, rather than extract.)

If you like bananas, banana bread, what have you, give it a try. Your taste buds will thank you.

Have some ripe bananas that you don't have time to cook right now? Freeze them!

Dole has increased its banana imports to Japan by more than 25%, yet there's still a shortage of the fruit in this island nation. So what's the reason behind this sudden spike in demand? A fad known as the Morning Banana Diet. It's so popular that one young woman has been waiting to start the diet for a month because her local OK Store is always out of bananas.

The run on bananas began last month when former opera singer Kumiko Mori who weighs more than 200 pounds announced on the television show Dream Press-sha that she lost 15 pounds on the Morning Banana Diet. After the show aired there was a 70 to 80 percent increase in banana sales versus last year at supermarkets run by Life Corp.

The regimen itself is pretty simple: Allow yourself as many bananas and room temperature water for breakfast; eat anything you like for lunch, 3 p.m. snack and dinner; stop eating by 8 p.m. and get to bed before midnight. It's the brainchild of Osaka pharmacist Sumiko Watanabe who designed it to increase the metabolism of her husband, Hitoshi, who lost 37 pounds. There's even a web site for the diet. It appears to be down right now, but this amusing video describing how the diet works complete with a techno version of The Banana Boat Song is still working.

This isn't the first time a fad diet has caused shortages in Japan. Last year the natto diet stripped supermarket shelves of the funky, slimy fermented soybeans. Who knows whether either of these diets works, but a morning banana beats natto any day.

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In an attempt to counteract threats of certain foods becoming extinct, scientists in Norway are attempting to collect and store every species of seed in the world.

Seeds in the Global Seed Vault range from Nigerian peas to Mexican corn, and they reside in a structure impervious to bombs and earthquakes (these scientists aren't kidding around). Temperature is regulated electronically, and no one person has all of the keys to the vault. And why the Arctic? One, it's not crowded, so the seeds won't be messed with. And two, it makes it a lot easier to keep the seeds at the required minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Until now, there has been no single storage system for the world's seeds. The idea came post 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, when scientists realized that the our diverse foods would most likely continue to be threatened and ultimately wiped out by disasters. These seeds are precious in part because they can scientists to identify strains of disease and fungi so that vulnerable food can be made resistant to these potential killers.

Scientists are also exploring ways to keep foods like bananas and coconuts, which can't be stored as seeds. Eventually, the goal is to have a database that farmers and plant breeders can consult to quickly and easily find seeds have certain characteristics so that they can be modified.

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