Two raw banana halves frame three scoops set side by side, so every spoonful offers a different flavor rather than one blended mix. Sauces should be at room temperature or colder, because a hot topping would melt a channel through the scoops before the bowl reaches the table.
Rum leads the flavor here rather than hiding in the background: the baked cakes sit in a syrup made with 100ml of it until they are soaked through to the center. A dough rich in butter and eggs bakes into an open, porous crumb, and those pockets are what drink up the syrup. Fully soaked, each cake swells to nearly twice its size. Legend credits the Polish king Stanislaw with soaking a dry kugelhopf in rum; the idea traveled through Naples to Paris, where pastry cooks gave it the small cylindrical shape. Each bite squeezes warm syrup out of the crumb.
Thin batter baked in a walnut-shaped mold wraps around sweet red bean paste and a toasted walnut half, leaving a lightly browned shell and a moist center. Toasting the walnuts at 160 degrees Celsius for 5 minutes beforehand gives the finished cakes a noticeably stronger nutty aroma. The snack began as a specialty of Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province and is now sold at highway rest stops and traditional markets across Korea.
Brennan's Restaurant in New Orleans created this dessert in the 1950s, and there the rum is poured into the pan and set alight. This version skips the flame. Bananas cook in a butter, brown sugar and cinnamon sauce, then go hot onto cold vanilla ice cream and reach the table still steaming. Start to finish, about ten minutes.
Whipped full of air, the meringue works as insulation, keeping a hot 230°C oven from reaching the ice cream inside. The whole thing spends only a few minutes in the heat, just long enough to brown the swirled peaks. Vanilla extract beaten into the meringue warms in that short bake and comes through as aroma. Cut it open and the face shows three layers at once: toasted meringue, cold vanilla ice cream and soft sponge.
The milk dough is left to rise until nearly doubled, so the steamed buns come out soft and moist. Pull one apart and the sweet red bean paste appears in a puff of steam.
The name is banana plus toffee. The toffee here is condensed milk stirred in a saucepan until deep amber, and although banoffee is usually called no-bake, this version gives the digestive biscuit base 10 minutes in the oven so it stays firm under that dense layer. Cut cold, a slice shows four clean layers: biscuit, toffee, banana and cream.
Sheets of buttered phyllo enclose two layers of walnuts and pistachios scented with cinnamon in this Turkish and Middle Eastern pastry, and a hot honey syrup goes over the pan once it leaves the oven. Over the next few hours the pastry absorbs it, staying crisp on top while turning moist and sticky below. Its sweetness is strong enough that baklava is cut into small diamonds and usually served with unsweetened Turkish coffee or bitter tea. Stored airtight at room temperature, it keeps for over a week, and some regions add rose water or orange blossom water to the syrup.
Glutinous rice flour in the yeast dough makes these pancakes chewier than an all-wheat dough, and the brown sugar inside melts into a hot cinnamon syrup as they cook. Pressing them flat with a spatula caramelizes the outside, but press too thin and the filling breaks through and sticks to the pan. Chopped peanuts give the syrup some crunch.
Bite through the chewy rice skin and the sesame filling, softened with butter and sugar, runs out warm and nutty. The broth is not a sugar syrup: the dumpling cooking water is simmered with sliced ginger, so its mild heat cuts through the rich, sweet center.
With baking soda doing the lifting, the batter goes into the pan as soon as it is mixed, with no rise to wait for. Three mashed bananas supply most of the moisture and sweetness, with melted butter and an egg making the crumb dense and tender. Baking it a day ahead costs nothing: the banana flavor gets stronger overnight and the loaf stays moist once cool. Walnuts or chocolate chips can be folded in for texture.
Sunflower and pumpkin seeds go into the brown sugar and cinnamon filling, and they stay crunchy inside the melted syrup. The yeast is started in warm milk instead of water.
The name comes from yude manju, boiled manju, as it was said in Saitama. True to it, the bean-filled buns cook in boiling water instead of a steamer, then get a cold rinse once they float and are fanned dry until they shine. They were made with the new wheat crop, offered at Bon and handed round to neighbors.
The coarsely chopped walnuts are toasted in a pan before they go in, so they come through as distinct nutty pieces in the moist banana crumb. Only half a teaspoon of cinnamon is used, not enough to cover the banana.
Butter-toasted bread stays crisp underneath while warm slices of injeolmi, a soft rice cake usually coated in roasted soybean powder, stretch on top, finished with more of that nutty powder and a thin line of honey. Too much honey soaks the bread. A thin drizzle, eaten right away, keeps the toast crisp underneath.
Bokbunja, Korean black raspberry juice, is set with sheet gelatin so the cups keep its deep purple color and tartness. One pass through a fine strainer before pouring takes out foam and sediment, and the jelly turns clear. A few blueberries and a mint leaf go on top.
Semolina makes up the batter, so each bite has a slightly coarse, sandy grain. Before baking, the top is scored into diamonds and an almond is pressed into each one. The lemony syrup goes on the moment the cake comes out of the oven.
Store-bought jjondeugi, a chewy Korean snack sold in flat sheets, gets warmed in a pan and brushed with a thin sweet-and-spicy gochujang glaze. A plain, unseasoned product works better than one already coated in spicy seasoning, since the added glaze is easier to balance.
An enriched dough of bread flour, milk, egg, and butter fries into a thin, crisp shell around a soft, airy crumb. The dough stays a little tacky after kneading; working in extra flour to tame it is the usual way to end up with a heavy, bready center.
No crust goes into the pan, only a tall collar of parchment, and the batter bakes at 230°C until the top turns deep brown with a bitter caramel smell. After four hours or more in the fridge the cake is firm, and a while at room temperature before serving brings the center back to soft and creamy.
Balls of yeast dough are fried bare, with no batter, then brushed with warm honey while still hot and rolled in chopped peanuts. This is a local snack from Tongyeong. Swapping the honey for rice syrup softens the sweetness and brings it closer to traditional Korean confections.
Puffed barley shatters lightly between chunks of toasted walnut and sesame, all held together by a rice syrup and honey syrup. Its texture hinges on cooking that syrup, unstirred, to 118°C: below it the bars stay tacky after cooling, above it they set hard enough to hurt your teeth. A spoonful of sesame oil stirred in at the end calms the bubbling and leaves a nutty finish.
The moisture in beet puree is what makes this dark chocolate cake heavy and damp. That is also why it should never bake until it looks dry; it comes out as soon as a skewer in the center shows no wet batter.
Butter dough that rises twice before it is twisted and fried gives a doughnut that stretches and chews when you bite it. Roll it in sugar the moment it leaves the oil, while it is hot enough for the sugar to stick.