Another winner from Cookie Madness. I had some bananas I wanted to use so I decided this would be an interesting recipe to try. They are very fruity and have a soft texture that is not crumbly from all the fruit in them. I used dried reconstituted cherries to use up some dried cherries I had instead of maraschino cherries.

The taste is slightly reminiscent of banana tea bread. Thanks Anna for sharing this recipe. Easy to adapt to vegan, just replace the egg with applesauce, apple butter, prune puree, or flax seeds and water. I usually use the flax seeds if I want to use an egg substitute, since that’s what I have around. Use whatever you prefer. If you use applesauce, apple butter, or prune puree it will add to the fruitiness. For the cream cheese icing, you could use a vegan cream cheese spread.

I left the nuts out of the bars and they still tasted good. The icing was fine without the milk added to it. The dried cherries were good and definitely had cherry flavour, but probably wouldn’t have the sweetness like the maraschinos, which would definitely be more like a banana split. Still, these bars were good. They have solid banana flavour. Put some ice cream on top and there you have it: banana split . Enjoy!

Banana Split Bars

220g (2 cups) gluten-free flour blend (I used white sorghum flour, white rice flour, and tapioca flour)

3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2 overripe bananas, mashed

225g (1 cup) caster sugar

2 eggs or 13g (2 tablespoons) ground flax seed and 90 ml (6 tablespoons) water

120 ml (1/2 cup) vegetable oil

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

50g (1/4 cup, 2 oz) dried cherries, reconstituted in equivalent volume of liquid

Icing:

55g (4 tablespoons) butter or trans-fat free shortening

85g (3 oz) cream cheese or vegan cream cheese spread

110g (1 cup) icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 175C (350F). Line a 23 x 33 cm (9×13 in) tin with parchment paper. Blend flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt, and cinnamon together. In a separate bowl, add bananas, sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla and mix until well combined. Mix in reserved dry ingredients. Add pineapple and cherries and stir it all together. Pour batter into the tin and spread evenly.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Let cool. Prepare icing by beating butter and cream cheese or shortening and vegan cream cheese spread together. Add icing sugar and beat until smooth. Add vanilla and beat until combined. Spread the completed icing on the cooled bars and garnish with extra cherries.

Casein-Free Option:

The bars are casein-free. For the icing, you could leave it off; the bars have plenty of flavour and texture without. In that case you could still garnish them with extra cherries. Or you can substitute trans-fat free shortening for the butter and a vegan cream cheese spread for the cream cheese.

Here is another good recipe from Anna at Cookie Madness. Just the name alone is amusing enough for me to want to bake them. When my kids tried to pronounce the name it came out as “Chooga Chew-Chews” at first, then shortened up to just “Chew-Chews”. These are tasty bars and to me tasted like a cross between Millionaire’s Shortbread and a Skor bar. The caramel filling here is more toffee like than Millionaire’s, which is a smoother caramel.

To try something different, I put chocolate chips on half the bars and 80% dark chocolate on the other. The dark chocolate was definitely richer and did taste good, but in the end I think I prefer the chocolate chips, as there is a better balance of chocolate and toffee and the chocolate chips did not overwhelm the toffee as much as the dark chocolate did. I wonder what a caramel chocolate bar on top would be like? Delicious I’d expect, hopefully not too gut-bustingly rich.

I found myself without arrowroot starch for this recipe, so I had to come up with a substitute. I don’t think I’ve ever tried a gluten-free flour blend before, premixed or one I’ve blended myself, that didn’t have a starch in it, so I was curious to see how the recipe held together. I used tapioca flour, buckwheat flour, and white sorghum flour. It worked, but I found it a bit crumbly, more so than other shortbreads I’ve made. Those didn’t have pecans either though, which could possibly have contributed to the crumbliness.

The first pic above, is of the bars just out of the oven, with the chocolate melted but not spread over the top yet. You can see the toffee peeking out, which doesn’t really show up as well in the other two pics. All in all, these are good.  They are rich and toasting the pecans brings out a good amount of nuttiness. If you have a nut allergy, though, I’m sure they would be just as tasty without the pecans.  Thanks Anna for sharing the recipe.  Enjoy!

(Semisweet chocolate on the left, 80% dark on the right)

(Dark chocolate on the left this time. Are those two waltzing? )