Baked Bananas in Rum Sauce

My younger sister is a fashion designer by trade and usually spends up to an hour in the front of the mirror doing her hair, makeup and matching accessories etc every morning. We used to be really close and she followed me everywhere mainly to keep me company and most of my friends, if not, all know her quite well. The first thing people notice about her, after her glamourous appearance is her voice…they are usually quite shocked that her voice is so ‘little girl’ and think that she is acting but that’s her real voice and it’s quite funny cos it doesn’t quite match her ‘look’…
The following video is of my two new best friends…Eskimo and Ellie…and the reason I got all nostalgic about my sis is becos my pretend voice sounds exactly her usual voice… :P



Ellie is the brown dog and she is very affectionate and a big fan of licking and gentle bitting…Eskimo is much more reserved and in the video, u can see him turning away..he’s a very timid little one….still got a long way to go before gaining his trust! They are my landlord’s sister’s dogs who are here on holiday til next week…and my landlord is planning to get another dog soon..a schnauzer..yippee!!

Cooking wise, I have become a new fan of the microwave!!! I love 'The microwave gourmet by Babara Kafta'!! And I got it together with another microwave cookbook by Margaret fulton for 99 cents on Ebay!! (Postage was 12 bucks but that still works out alright!!) The book is a godsend!! So many recipes to try and lots of interesting ideas…drying orange and lemon zest (I usually don’t have those on hand and sort of searching for dried zest but didn’t realise they do exist and u can make them at home!), making stocks and stock concentrates (gotta try!) and steaming various vegetables…aubergine, artichokes and sweetcob…for instance, a whole corn cob just takes 2 minutes…compared to the usual method, there’s so much less clean up and the colours of the veggies are more vibrant as well!

The microwave recipe that I m going to share today is super simple and extremely comforting..
Made it when a friend came over for dinner and there wasn’t a lot of time to prepare anything…and this dessert was done in less than 8 minutes..!!



Baked Bananas in Rum Sauce
(for 2)
Ingredients
2 bananas, sliced and arrange in small ramikins
5.5 tbs dark rum
30 g brown sugar
30 g butter
½ tsp vanilla essence
1 tbs lemon juice
zest of ¼ lemon
1 slice fresh ginger

method:
Combine rum, sugar, butter, lemon juice, zest and ginger in a 1 litre glass measuring jug. Cover tightly with microwave cling film. Cook at 100% for 2 minutes. ( my oven is 800 watts- if urs is higher or lower, pls adjust the cooking time..)
Add vanilla essence and pour mixture evenly over the bananas. Cook at 100% for 2 minutes.
Optional: serve with a dollop of yoghurt/ whipped cream/ ice cream and a sprinkling of cinnamon.



Instructions were also given for a six portion serve…which was 6 bananas and double all the other ingredients…with the cook time at around 4 minutes 30 seconds…I m still not too sure about how to approximate cooking time with the varying power of different microwaves and it doesn’t make sense to me how making 6 would lower the calories in the recipes due to the reduced proportion of the rum mixture….
But yeah, this is an awesome recipe which will leave you feeling very at ease with the world and perhaps just a little less homesick...