Banana Halwa: another use for overripe bananas!

These taste way better than they look. I swear.

I have been trying to eat healthier as of late.  Part of this is eating more fruit.  For a while this was going gang busters... mainly because sugar was not something I was tolerating well.  But now my affinity for sweet things is returning with a vengeance and so we have lots of fruit in the house that is not being eaten.  This means lots of overripe bananas. I can only make so much banana bread, so I was also on a search for other things to do with bananas.  I made banana white chocolate pancakes (oh.my.GOD), banana milkshakes, mini banana splits.  But those were only good for the ripe bananas.  What about the ones that are super brown?

Enter Madhur Jaffrey.

My husband loves Indian food.  Basically, if I cook other stuff for dinner it almost doesn't count.  So I am always looking for new recipes that are easy and quick to make that taste good.  So far I have built up a pretty good repertoire of Indian food, but have really been lacking on the dessert aspect there.  So in my mission, I ended up buying a few Indian cookbooks, one of which was Madhur Jaffrey's Quick and Easy Indian cookbook.  I should have known by the title that the dishes would be a little less than what I was looking for, but there definitely are easy recipes in there.

 Enter the banana halwa.

What is banana halwa?  Well, its kind of a sticky toffee made out of bananas with nuts.  It is also pretty sweet. I made it with a bit less sugar than the recipe called for and it still tasted okay.  I think the overripe bananas kind of sweeten an extra little bit on their own, so that helps.

with a little whipped cream or clotted cream, delicious!

This dessert can be made in about 15 minutes.  When I was making it I kept thinking, this is not going to come together like the picture in the book.  And it didn't exactly match the picture... but it was close enough.  And when I fed it to my hubby, he was very happy.

So if you have extra bananas lying around and don't want to go through all the trouble of making banana bread, you can try this out.  It only has 5 ingredients and comes together pretty quick, so its a great weeknight dessert.  It is also exotic enough that it would be great for a dinner party.

Banana Halwa


Ingredients:

• 4 bananas
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon chopped pistachios
• 1/2 tablespoon chopped walnuts

Directions:

Mash the bananas with a fork in a bowl.  Set aside.  In a frying pan, heat oil until it is hot on medium high heat.  Add the mashed bananas and fry for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Turn the heat down to medium and continue to fry for 10 minutes, or until the mixture becomes a soft, brown toffee and continue to stir occasionally.

Overripe bananas mash really easily with a fork.

Once bananas begin to brown, add sugar.  Turn heat to low and continue to stir until the sugar completely dissolves.  Mix in the chopped nuts and remove from the heat.  Allow to cool to room temperature.

It will turn darker brown as it cools.  You want a mixture the color of  an overripe banana peel.

Once cool, the mixture is malleable and you can shape it as you like.  I tried to do fig shaped balls. It didn't work out that great.  I think regular round balls might have been better.  Or you can press it into a small dish and refrigerate and then cut into diamond shapes or squares for a more traditional halwa look.

Enjoy!

Source: Madhur Jaffrey's Quick and Easy Indian Cooking