Pear Tart and Panna Cotta

I'm just making a quick post to update with some photos of my most recent dessert platings. My baking production class has become quite time consuming, and with a bar mitzvah at work last weekend and a stage at the Grey Plume this weekend, I have had time only to work and watch an hour of television before I go to bed. I'm hopeful that this week will provide some respite from that schedule. I'll only be spending 9 hours at school today!

Last week, my desserts were featured once again at the Sage Bistro. I made a pear and almond tart and a coconut-mango panna cotta. In the end, I did come to love both desserts but it took time for them to grow on me. I was initially excited about them, but last Monday I was disappointed with the caramel sauce and the pastry cream filling. I tweaked them the next day, but it wasn't until I was plating them on Thursday evening that I really adored the tarts. I finally finally finally mastered the tart shells with a new trick (top secret). The panna cotta, once it set up, was just beautiful (if you ask me). I love the clean lines and the tuile top. It looks like it belongs at a black tie event. I am satisfied.

More Foibles in Plating

I have been forced lately to think about my personal aesthetic. In the past, I just buy or am gifted my style. I don't think much about it. For a while, I would follow fashion blogs and pull away ideas, but now I need to apply what little I know about design to what I know about food, and more specifically pastries, to present it in a visually pleasing manner. This is a challenge. I normally put on a plate as if there were TV-dinner compartments. One spot is for vegetables, one spot for meat and another for potatoes. Desserts go on small plates and are garnished with a large dollop of whipped cream. In many ways, I ascribe to the school of thought that one shouldn't judge a book by its cover. That saying can get one into trouble. While true, if a book has a beautiful cover but not substance it will be cast aside. However, giving no thought to exterior presentation at all shows a laziness which is fine when serving dinner for your family or friends but is not acceptable when you expect someone to be impressed or better yet to lay down money for a good or service.

So I've been thinking about my personal style lately. After contemplating my wardrobe choices on a very very long road trip I have come to a few conclusions about myself. I like simplicity matched with a bit of flair. I own a large volume of plain T-shirts in various colors, mostly short-sleeved, and with differing neck-lines--boat, crew, v-neck--to name just a few. I wear three pairs of jeans: skinny, higher-waisted flairs and white jeans. I have one jacket, with a herringbone pattern, that I wear all the time along with this one pair of moccasins (brown) and subdued gladiator sandals. All boring, except for this one element: a pin. I got the pin at a clothing exchange with friends. It is completely singular and must be handmade. It is an old pocketwatch with the workings removed. In its place glued, tied and somehow or another way affixed is delicate drapings of chain mail, small rhinestone daisies and a large and somewhat gaudy plastic-pearl clip-on earring. I put a safety pin through the top of the brass pocket watch and it has hung galantly on my jacket for two years now. That is the perfect point of style for me. Minimal and simple and then there's this one piece of intrigue. I like scarves, funky sunglasses, I tuck my T-shirts into my pants to show of a belt. I have this one necklace that I bought in Spain for 6 euros in 2004. It's black with gold etchings of birds and flowers chiseled out of it. So what I want to learn and to refine is how to present a dessert that is delicious while being simple with just a touch of flair.

I am discovering there are as many ways to dress a plate as there are to dress a person. For instance, there's flashy with too much going on:

There's skill with a lack of a focal point:

There's trendy to a point of silliness:

What I want is minimalism with a point of interest:

The shape is nice, flattering. The goods are well made. Everything is great about this outfit. Her skirt is the obvious focal point, but it all shows off the person--her hair, her great body (jealous) and her cute face. There aren't these beautiful pieces distracting people from how lovely she is. Here is a reinterpretation of a lemon tart. We can't actually taste it, but the elements look well executed. The lemon curd is creamy and lump free, as does the meringue. The crumb layer appears to add some crunch. It's a basic tart presented in a different way. If only I could come up with something like this.

Last week, I made chocolate pots de creme. My instructor was insistent upon them being chocolate--not mocha flavored, not chocolate-hazelnut or chocolate peppermint. Plain but rich chocolate. The challenge is how to present it in a way that exhibits fine technique and good ingredients. I ended up using Tartine Bakery's recipe--no surprise there--which was rich and bitter and perfectly creamy.

I started with a quenelle of creme fraiche on the suggestion of the bakery student manager. I liked the plating below--looks like the last pedal left on a flower. However, no one agreed with me. I do really like the whipped and sweetened creme fraiche. It's something I hadn't tried before but worked nicely--it had that bit of sourness to give it one more piece of flavor.

At the suggestion and with the help of classmates and the TA, I flooded the top of the pots de creme with caramel creme anglaise. I then added a garnish of chocolate sauce. I learned that garnishes should be present only if they add something to the dessert--an idea I love but which can make plating trickier.

I came back from break with an idea for a triple chocolate pots de creme with a white chocolate creme anglaise and milk chocolate sauce. My instructor thought flooding the top with plain cold creme would be better along with some chocolate shavings. I'm not too crazy about the chocolate shavings because thinking of garnishes and desserts as a whole it's not much, however, the plate was just so white without the chocolate. I don't have a photo of the final dessert, but I'm pleased and hope that my efforts will come more easily in the future.

Lessons in Plating

One great thing has happened that directly impacts this blog: I have an iPhone! Which means that I have a decent camera with me at all times, ready to document all my culinary adventures. And believe me, there have been a few this past week.

Right now, I'm enrolled in baking production class. It meets twice a week for like 10 hours--until the school's restaurant Sage Bistro closes on Monday and Tuesday--and we make the baguettes for the restaurant along with any desserts for catered events. The class meets at the same time as the Plated Desserts class, which essentially has students be the pastry chef for the bistro for the quarter. There happens to be only one student in that class this quarter, and she is responsible for producing four completely unique desserts each week. So alleviate her insanity, our instructor is having different students from my class fill in to help her each week. I got to go first, along with my friend Katie. Let me say, thank goodness I had Katie to bond with, freak out with and laugh with because it was a complete cluster.

We we responsible for two desserts: creme brulee (pretty easy really) and this thing called a tian (refer to the strawberry-orange dessert displayed above). I would be very happy to never make that dessert again.

The thing was Chef Mar's idea. She brought us a print out of the concept: cookie, marmalade, mousse, and packed with fruit. She said we could reinterpret it how we wanted. So we made a sable cookie, used some in-house marmalade, I made an orange-vanilla bavarian cream stabilized with gelatin, and then we chopped up a bunch of fruit. Monday morning before the restaurant opened, Chef Mar hated it. It was all wrong, she said. The fruit looked disgusting--it kind of did. Katie and I were clueless. I had no idea how to fix it. Finishing things is not my forte--Katie is much better at it than I, but we were both at a loss. Finally Chef Mar came over and showed us what to do, but not after an agonizing period during which time we flubbed around with the dessert. We got out of the kitchen after more than 12 hours of work without more than a 15-minute break then we turned around and came back the next day for more.

I had made a batch of the mousse on Monday to use Tuesday and Wednesday, except that by the time we left the kitchen at 10 p.m. or so the mousse was still a runny mess. I was paranoid that it wouldn't set and that there wouldn't be enough time to make another batch and set it so that it stood up on the plate long enough to travel from the kitchen to the dining room. The only way I got any sleep was to give it up. I thought, "There's nothing to be done now. I'll just arrive and remake it." But Tuesday, miracle of miracles, the mousse was solid enough to work--barely. Tuesday went much better. Katie and I both had a handle on what we were doing and what to expect, and we left planning to leave everything to the student managers on Wednesday and Thursday. That is until some of the Table Service students tried to eat our dummy dessert.

We had to make a false dessert to display to the restaurant's customers. The creme brulee was really, but the tian--not being shelf stable for hours--needed a stunt double. Katie made this perfect model out of Crisco and a little food coloring. It looked so realistic that the students got hungry and ate the creme brulee and started in on the mousse. The student manager caught them before they finished it, but they had effectually ruined the dessert. I got called in to remake the dessert for Thursday's service. What a week.

Deer Tenderloin

I had four or five paragraphs written out about this deer tenderloin, but things just kept rambling on and on very amateurishly so I deleted it. There were all sorts of ponderings about life and blogging and eating and dating--trust me it was boring. Just look at the photos.

I cooked the deer, brought to me straight from the woods from my friend Dan, with a fennel and crushed bay leaf rub. I've used it before on pork tenderloin--quite tasty and not at all as weird as it sounds. Try it with this season's trappings.

Me Oh My, I Love Pie

I'm usually a nut for pumpkin pie at Christmas and Thanksgiving, but I have lately been converted to the pecan variety. I've been making this pecan pie for work quite a bit lately to pretty rave reviews, but I hadn't tried it myself yet until last week. It is great. No surprise here, the recipe hails from Tartine Bakery's cookbook. Every recipe is a knockout. This one is great with the addition of whiskey and my substitution, orange zest. Tasting the batter before the bake, the whiskey is overpowering but ends up perfectly balanced.

The recipe also calls for several kinds of sugar, as opposed to just corn syrup. It adds a lot of depth the pie, making it not just sweet sweet sweet--my usual complaint with pecan pies. I was careful to add extra salt here too if you're not using salt pecans. I just love salted nuts, it seems such a shame to miss the opportunity for salted and toasted pecans covered in caramel.

Pecan Pie: www.tartinebakery.com
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup, I've also used honey
1/2 cup corn syrup
2 tablespoons whiskey
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter, unsalted
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups pecans
zest from one orange

One partially baked pie shell.

In a small saucepan, melt the sugar, maple syrup and corn syrup together with the salt. Boil for one minute. Remove from heat and pour in a mixing bowl. Let cool a minute then add the vanilla, whiskey and butter. Stir. Then add the beaten eggs. Stir to mix. Pour the pecan in the partially baked pie shell then pour the batter over the top. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes at 350 degrees until the filling is just set.

Three Posts in One Week and an Awesome Tart

I hosted dinner last night for friends in honor of a couple friends who are embarking on big journeys this week. One friend, Liz, is traveling to the brand new country of South Sudan tomorrow morning. She has "humanitarian" stamped into her passport. Incredible. And my friend Justin and his girlfriend Audrey are moving to Colorado on Thursday. Justin has never lived outside Omaha before, so this is sure to be a great adventure, one that should be marked off by a homey dinner with friends.

It's finally starting to get cold here, and with leftover turkey on my mind, I made two pot pies. One all mushrooms and one chicken. It actually took quite a bit of searching to come up with a meal plan. Justin is a vegetarian, so there couldn't be meat, but it's not exactly prime produce season and I didn't want to serve a bunch of sides. I leafed through what seemed like all my cookbooks (sometimes I can get obsessive), and finally found something on Nigel Slater's column about a mushroom shepherd's pie. It was an easy jump to pot pie (in theory). I have come to realize through my cakes final and my first year testing that I need a lot of work on finishing products. I start out strong, cover my bases with good technique, some expertise and quality ingredients. And then I've got to put the top on the pie, which it shall be noted was not in a pie shell, and I just throw it on. Of course it totally shrank in the oven. I may as well not have even topped it (the topless chicken pie turned out just fine).

I do this with everything I've come to realize. All projects. Writing a story; I get through the first draft and read through it and turn it in. I'll come back and give it some work, maybe. But by the end, I'm just doing the bare minimum. How do I motivate myself to put forth as much energy at the end as I do at the beginning when I'm absolutely slaving over coming up with the perfect lede for a story. Does anyone out there have any tips? One thing I can think of is practice. For example, if I'm well practiced at making petit fours, I can do them just as well after oh say 15 hours of work as I do after one hour. So there's something. But what about writing? If any of you have tips on that front, let me know!

I found three different kinds of mushrooms for the pot pie at Wohnler's: dried shiitake that I rehydrated, baby portobellos and oysters. Slater recommended pairing the mushrooms with a sliced leek, sauteing, deglazing with red wine and and lemon juice and adding vegetable stock before popping it in the oven. A couple heaping tablespoons of flour was plenty to thicken the stock to a stew inside the flaky pie crusts, and the pot pie turned out exactly how I had hoped: a sweet and woodsy hash with chunks of mushrooms. I treated the chicken pot pie in the same way, except added some extra celery and carrots that had been chilling in the freezer for a loooong time (yikes), almost as long as the chicken.

But the highlight of the meal was definitely dessert. I saw a recipe a for hazelnut-plum tart on Smitten Kitchen and made a mental note to make it as soon as there was time. (And I'll be making it again for work this week.) In absence of fresh plums, I used cranberries. It. was. incredible. The hazelnut butter crust was was crunchy with a bit of sweetness and just a hint of salt. The salt was the kicker. I love a salty dessert. And then there was the center. Creamy baked custard filled in the cracks around the tart little cranberries that just bled out juice under the heat of the oven. And to top it all was the rest of the hazelnut crumb crust and a little whipped cream (homemade, might I add). My good friend Dan has never ever eaten more than a polite bite of any desserts I have made (he doesn't like sweets) asked for a second slice--there wasn't any.

Mushroom Pot Pie:
Filling: by Nigel Slater
16 ounces assorted mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 leek, sliced
a couple tabs of butter and glugs of oil, enough to get all the mushrooms
2 heaping tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons red wine or marsala
1 1/4 cup vegetable or chicken stock
salt and pepper
fresh thyme
juice from half a lemon

Crust: from Tartine Bakery Cookbook yields two 9-inch pies
1 1/2 cups cold butter
16 ounces flour
1 cup ice cold water
1 teaspoon salt

I mix smaller batches of flaky crust by hand nowadays. I slice up the butter and add the flour and salt to it. Then I crumble up the butter with my fingers until they're about the size of peas, some smaller pieces some bigger. Then I add about half the water and stir with a wooden spoon. Then add only enough water until the dough comes together. I knead it a couple times, then wrap it in plastic wrap and chill it for at least an hour before rolling. This recipe makes enough for two whole pies with the tops, if you conserve your leftover pieces.

For the filling, slice up all the vegetables. Heat the oil on medium in a stock pot. Saute the leeks and the heartier mushrooms like portobellos, then add the shiitakes and oysters and the like. Saute until the moisture is starting to leech out of the mushrooms. Add the flour and stir to coat. Deglaze with the wine and the lemon juice. Then add the stock. Season throughout cooking with salt and pepper. It should taste good before it goes into the shell. Pour into the shell, pinch the top closed, brush with an egg wash and bake at 350 degrees for an hour or until the crust is a nice golden brown.

Hazelnut Cranberry Tart: from Smitten Kitchen
Crust:
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup hazelnuts, toasted (this is a crucial step!)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling
10 ounces fresh or frozen cranberries
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 cup plus two tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup cream
1/4 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Toast the hazelnuts until they are light brown and nicely fragrant. Pulse in a food processor until coarsely ground. Combine with the butter, flour, salt and cinnamon, blending using your hands until the butter is the size of a pea. Use about two-thirds of the crumb mixture and press into the bottom of a tart pan or spring form. Bake at 350 degrees until "set," about 15 minutes. Let the crust cool a bit.

Add the cranberries and arrange on top of the crust. In a separate bowl, whisk together the rest of the ingredients. Carefully pour over the cranberries. Bake at 350 for 45 to 50 minutes or until the custard has set and the top has browned a little. If you gently shake the tart and the center is visibly quite jiggly keep baking. But if it seems more solid than liquid pull it out, it will continue to set while it cools.

Breaded Squash

And the beat goes on. It would have been a great idea to post this recipe before Thanksgiving, but I'm not exactly punctual. Up until last week, I was barely treading water. I have reclaimed my life, if only temporarily. If there's anything I've learned going to school the second time around, it's to soak up the free moments. I've got another two days off this week before winter classes start (International Breads, so excited), and I'm glad to spend a few minutes recording some recipes in this space.

I hosted another potluck probably three weeks ago now, and I found this easy fall recipe at Sprouted Kitchen, which is a vegetarian blog (some seafood I believe) with the absolute worst most disgusting photos you can ever imagine (sarcasm) and written by the ugliest meanest writer (lies, she's so gorgeous you want to hate her). The breaded squash turned out to be a real hit at the party though. There were a few pieces left at the end for me to nibble while cleaning up. I love winter squash. It's so hearty and bold. It's a vegetarian's best friend. I love that this dish is roasted--such a fall thing--with rosemary and thyme and a whole clove of garlic. I just love a kitchen that smells like rosemary and garlic. The rosemary comes straight out of the forest while that garlic is remotely offputting in a way that makes you want more--you know how you keep smelling that gym bag? This, my friends, is a winner.

Panko-breaded Butternut Squash:
1 butternut squash
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs, smashed up a bit more than how they come in the bag.
1 clove garlic with the bottom sliced off
several sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme
olive oil
salt and pepper
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Peel and dice the squash into equally-sized portions. Place in baking pans.

In a separate bowl, combine the panko crumbs, which you will want to smash up a bit more than how they come in the bag so they really stick to the squash, parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper. Drizzle the squash with olive oil and toss to coat. Season a bit with salt and pepper--not too much remembering the seasoning in the bread crumbs. Toss the bread crumb mixture in with the squash. Press the crumbs into the squash if necessary. Add the rosemary, thyme and garlic to the pan. Roast at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until the squash is soft to the bite but not mushy.

The Ends of Cakes

It has officially been the longest since I have posted on this blog. More than a month. In fact, this is the second time I've attempted completing this particular post. I fell asleep the first time. (If even the writer is falling asleep, this is not a good sign.) Obviously I have been busy. I have finally made it to the end of a clusterf*** of a week-and-a-half that went something like this: two stories due, cakes final examination, out-of-town wedding that served as a nice break, three grueling days going through the first-year culinary tests , a 15-hour day at work, intense cleaning at school (I took on a deep fat fryer--gross) and some light-to-heavy drinking (whoops).

I have emerged somewhat unscathed. I passed my exams and assumedly my cakes final, the output of which you can see in these photos. I look at the cakes up close and cringe a little. They look so sloppy--look at that broken ladyfinger below. I swear none of the other ladyfingers broke. And that chocolate cake doesn't look polished at all. It's supposed to have these smooth finished sides. But, they did taste delicious.

For a project, our cakes instructor gave each of the students an artist to design two cakes and 20 petit fours for. I drew Maria Martinez, who is an American Indian pottery artist known for developing this amazing black on black technique. She is credited with being the artist to bring American Indian art to museums and collectors.

I really lucked out with her because she is from New Mexico, an area with a distinct culinary tradition. I developed my cakes around the flavors of the Southwest. Note: Do not attempt these at home. It took me six hours, including quite a bit of actual running, to finish on time. The pink cake has a corn meal sponge bottom followed by a layer of lemon curd mousse, a sunflower seed baked meringue (which was awesome), then a prickly pear mouse and surrounded by ladyfingers. The chocolate cake had a chocolate sponge base, then chocolate-cinnamon-cayenne pepper mousse and a brown-sugar bavarian cream with another sunflower meringue and topped with chocolate-cinnamon-cayenne ganache and chocolate feather cutouts. The petit fours have a lemon sponge with sage-flavored pastry cream filling, a poured fondant top and royal icing piping.

I enjoyed playing around with the Southwest theme and thought everything turned out alright, aside from the fact that I think the cakes are the equivalent of a third graders coloring book instead of a professional but whatever.

I really grew to adore mousse even more in this class. I hadn't realized how easy it can be to attempt, although I feel a long way from perfecting it. During my later examinations, I was chided for mixing the chocolate with the whipped cream when the chocolate was too warm, which causes the cream to break. But if the chocolate is too cool it seizes up and hardens mid-blending. It's such a subtle art this pastry, and I am not a subtle person.

Almost Thai Green Curry

I have no photo to share, and whenever I don't have a photo I assume that no one will read what goes along. Truth is, I'm probably right--not that my writing is something to slow down your day for. I haven't been snapping photos, but I have been cooking. A couple weeks ago I made a vegetable curry stew for friends. It was so good, I saved the leftovers and ate them all, which is something I never do. I don't ever eat leftovers, aside from soup. But this curry, this curry could not be thrown away. It came from Nigel Slater's Tender: Volume 1, a most beautiful tome that I haven't even read through despite the pictures, the useful information and the riveting prose (listen to this: "the dusty 'old as time itself' taste of ground turmeric" I could never come up with that). This curry was the closest I have ever come to replicating the green curry I would order almost nightly from Phee Lek, my Thai grandma. When I was teaching and eating in Thailand, she was the cook at the restaurant on the compound of my apartment complex. Was teeny tiny, not even five feet tall and a sweet sort of wily. She ran this tiny little restaurant that had five or six tables and a large television that played a lot of MTV, her daughter's favorite. She spoke hardly any English, which was perfect because I spoke hardly any Thai. We communicated with action and pointing. 

After getting sick of rice for every meal, I tried ordering vegetables without it. Complete with hand motions I said the English equivalent of "No want rice. Vegetables. Big big vegetables." With some trial and error, I received before me a platter of the sauteed tomatoes, baby corn, eggplant, onions, peppers and several kinds of mushrooms--it was a veritable cornucopia--all doused in delicious MSG. She also taught me how to properly pronounce green curry with chicken in Thai, quite a feat considering the intonation. I don't order it much any more--too much disappointment--but I have requested green curry at a restaurant downtown and the waiter was very impressed. The curry was my other standby in Thailand. Lek made it with Japanese eggplant and pumpkin, if they were available. I ordered the smokey curry with a spice level of one and slurped down the stew sweetened with coconut milk with only a little rice. 

This dish doesn't have the complications of making a curry paste beforehand out of God knows how many herbs, spices and aromatics, but it still has that depth that makes you wonder, what is in here? I went to the Asian Market, a relatively new store, to find real lemongrass, which made such a difference. I always want to substitute lemons for lemongrass but it's not quite right, not earthy enough or something. I didn't even realize how close I would come to Pee Lek's green curry, but with the inclusion of squash or pumpkin--it's nearly there.

Pumpkin-chickpea Curry: from Tender by Nigel Slater, serves 6

1 15-ounce can chickpeas or 1/2 cup dry chickpeas, soaked overnight

1 large onion, diced

1 teaspoon canola oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 thumb-size piece ginger, minced

3 stalks lemongrass

2 teaspoons ground coriander

2 teaspoons ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

dash of cayenne pepper (to taste)

1/2 small pumpkin (about 8 ounces), cubed

250 mL vegetable or chicken stock

400 mL coconut milk

1 tablespoon mustard seeds

2 cups rice, cooked

Mince the garlic and the ginger together. Saute the onion until it's translucent. Add the minced garlic and ginger. Stir in the spices. Add the pumpkin, chickpeas and vegetable stock as well as the lemongrass with its tough outer leaves removed. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook until the pumpkin has softened a bit and the chickpeas have split. Thicken with cream, season to taste. In a separate pan, saute the mustard seeds until they spit, add to the curry. Serve over rice.

Hummingbird Cake

I know I swore I hated cakes, but I'm learning some aren't so bad. Every Thursday I go to my class devoted entirely to the subject. All I eat all day Thursdays is cakes. Everyone in the class makes a different cake, and I try them all. Sometimes I can't stop, especially on mousse day. I was dipping my fork in everything chocolate, caramel and fruit-flavored. This hummingbird cake, the one pictured above, was part of the classic American cakes day. It was so easy and such a showstopper. The Southern favorite reminded me of carrot cake, really moist and sweet. The batter has crushed pineapple, bananas and pecans in it.

Below is the Heaven and Hell cake, which apparently goes for like $100 at the Mansion, a fancy hotel-restaurant in Dallas. It's certainly a Texas-style cake: six layers with peanut-butter mouse in between each and covered with chocolate ganache. The cake cleverly features alternating layers of angel food and devil's food cake. Decadent and ridiculous--that's Texas for you. I much prefer the simpler, homier hummingbird.

Hummingbird Cake:
110 grams pecans, chopped and toasted
420 grams flour
400 grams sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 eggs, beaten
180 mL canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
227 grams crushed pineapple, undrained
2 cups mashed bananas (3 to 4 bananas)

Cream Cheese Frosting:
57 grams butter, room temperature
227 grams cream cheese, room temperature
454 grams powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
55 grams pecans, chopped and toasted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Makes two nine-inch rounds. Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, mix together eggs, oil, vanilla, pineapple, bananas and pecans. Combine ingredients being careful not to overmix. Divide the batter evenly and bake 25 to 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out of the cake cleanly. Let cool before frosting.

For the frosting, cream the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy. Sift the powdered sugar and add to the butter gradually. Add the vanilla and beat until smooth. Stir in the pecans by hand. Ice the cake.