I’ve been reminded recently that I’ve been remise in sharing the recipes of food that I’ve been posting on Facebook. It has been a significant amount of time since I’ve posted anything. I’m not even going to make excuses, I won’t talk about my new crush which is scuba diving and all the awe that entails. I won’t complain about having to live in chaos for months and months as we renovated our kitchen from top to bottom. Those are first world problems and I’m very fortunate to have them.
I will share though that my oldest got engaged and we’ve been talking about planning a wedding next summer and having it in our yard. This of course involves having discussions about food and who was going to do what, what we would order, what I might make. Then the request came and so my eagerness to experiment in the kitchen was ignited once again.
“It would be great if you could make the Banana Split Cheesecake.” This was followed by Googling, pinning and searching for all sorts of cool stuff on the internet. We have a new mission… Figure out how to make a dessert that will stand up for a couple of days, will easily feed about 70 people and will look pretty… (okay I’m not the best at the look pretty part) and taste just like her favourite dessert.
I thought jars might be a good idea, they would be easy to serve and we could make part of them ahead. I was thinking of making the bottom two layers, the banana bread and pineapple cheesecake parts first and then we could even freeze them if need be. Then just before we serve them we can top them off with fresh chopped strawberries, whipping cream and chocolate. Not sure yet if this is what we’ll land on but it was fun making them and everyone had fun eating them.
I didn’t have to recreate the wheel here as the various portions came from different sites and were adapted. I’ll provide my version of the recipe here with the links to the originals.
I made one recipe of this dessert and then split the batter in 8 mason jars. I put them in a water bath* and baked them at 325 degrees for about 50 minutes, or until golden brown.
In the meantime I made the Pineapple Cheesecake
Adapted from the original
- 12 oz of cream cheese
- 1 can, 8 oz of crushed pineapple
- 1 envelope of Knox Unflavoured Gelatine
Mix the gelatine and crushed pineapple in a small saucepan when cold, once mixed place on burner and bring to a boil. Allow to boil for 1 – 2 minutes then set aside. Place the cream cheese in a mixer and using the whisk attachment mix the cream cheese (easiest if it is room temperature). Then slowly add in the hot pineapple gelatine mixture and mix until combined. Allow to cool for 5 – 10 minutes then split the recipe between the 8 jars of baked banana bread and allow to cool further. Place in refrigerator and allow the cheesecake to set.
At this point the recipe can be made ahead and refrigerated for a couple of days or (I’m thinking … it can be frozen to use at a later date? I haven’t experimented with that yet but it’s coming.)
Chop up a couple of dozen or so fresh strawberries into small pieces and layer them atop the cheesecake again splitting between the 8 jars.
Top all of this with fresh whipping cream and chocolate sauce. I used melted chocolate chips here to drizzle on top but have also made a few using the kind of chocolate sauce you buy at a grocery store to drizzle on ice cream.
Top with a strawberry and serve….. All the essential flavours of a Banana Split and seriously delicious!
* Water bath – I read on sites where they say you can bake in the jars and some said you can’t and shouldn’t. I’m wasn’t sure which was true so I tread cautiously and placed the jars in a baking dish. I layered a tea towel under the jars so they wouldn’t move and filled the baking dish with water to reach the top of the Banana Bread. I also baked these at 325 degrees and made sure they didn’t cool too quickly by leaving them in the bath water until they cooled. Consequently I didn’t have any issues with the jars cracking or anything that would cause problems.
