July 14, 2008

Bananada

Today I tried an experiment: cooking bananada. It's a Brazilian sweet that is made from bananas and sugar, cooked until they are an opaque dark brown. I have only ever bought it on the side of the road, but I remember once asking my friend - as we stopped to buy some on the way from Curitiba to the beach - why she bought it from a sketchy looking shack instead of just making it. Her reply came back to me today as I waited for the bananada to change color and texture: "porque tem que cozina-la durante o dia inteiro!" But it is such a tasty treat, tangy, with the texture of soft taffy, and a little crunch from the sugary coating, that I think I had put the time part out of my mind.

I started it on the stove, about 600g of sugar to just under a kilo of banana, just about 2:00. I just took it off the stove to cool. It had cooked down to barely 3/4" of dense brown sticky goo in the bottom of the pan. I'm going to let it sit over night to come all the way to room temperature, then tomorrow make it into little blocks and roll them in granulated sugar to keep them from sticking (and up the sugar quotient to "bounding off the walls"). Updates to come on whether it tastes anything like the real deal from the side of the road.

Posted by binky at July 14, 2008 10:16 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Food


Comments

Tasty - presuming that's what you gave me last night.

Posted by: Armand at October 27, 2008 07:47 PM | PERMALINK

It is.

Posted by: binky at October 27, 2008 08:19 PM | PERMALINK
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