Hey, Miss J!

So, by this title, it should be fairly obvious what my choice was last night. Also, I apparently misread how long it would take to make the banana pudding.

My traitorous eyeballs told me that I would need three hours minimum to make the dessert.

For some reason, my brain forgot that I was making dessert and not a dinner. When I make pizza, I square away three hours because I need time to make the dough, then roll it out, make the sauce, put the sauce on the pizza, then grate the cheese and prep whatever peppers, etc I want on it.

Then 15-20 minutes to bake.

And with 1.5lbs of pizza dough, I can make two small personal pizzas. However, the pans are so big that I can only fit one in the toaster oven at a time.

Oh, did I mention before that I do most if not all of my baking in a toaster oven? I still don’t have a new gas range, so I’ve been making due with a massive variety of kitchen appliances.

Let’s see if I can remember all of them.

Matter of fact, let’s make a list. This might be a bit…

• 2x hot plates w/ 2 burners each
• 1 8qt air fryer
• 1 10-cup(dry) rice cooker with a steam basket
• 1 slow cooker
• 1 Oster hand mixer with about 4 or so attachments including whisk and dough hooks and one still unidentified piece Maybe for milkshakes??
• 1 food dehydrator
• 1 hot air popcorn maker
• 1 collapsible electric water kettle
• 1 soda stream (I need new syrup and probably a new CO2 cannister.)
  • 2-3 bottles (Might need new bottles too.)
• 1 Nuwave oven (pain in my backside to clean… grrr.)
  • Accessories: Kielbasa sticks, grill, 1 bottom pot, 1 huge lid, drip tray, heat tray… blah.
• 1 toaster oven
  • Accessories: 1 muffin tin, 1 teeeny tinny pizza pan, 2 baking pans, 1 full size baking sheet, 1 small grilling pan w/ removable grill, 2 11×8 pans (used for pizza), 1 lasagna pan, 3 bread pans (full size, two can fit in toaster oven together), metal grill inside the machine, bottom metal plate
• 2 Oster breadmakers
• 1 Bamboo bread slicer
• 1 Victorinox Swiss bread knife (Mmm. One of my favorite knives. 10 inches long and slices through bread like it’s nothing at all.)
• 3 piece set mortar & pestle
• 1 Fiesta Cutlery knife block (comes with 11 pieces including sharpener and kitchen shears)
• 1 toaster for 4 slices with frozen and/or bagel setting
• Cast Iron Pans
  • Huuuge, large, small, very small and square shaped. (I really like square shaped omelets.)
• Steel Pots
  • Large, Medium and small
• 1 big steel cooking pot w/ strainer and lid
• 1 full sized turkey pan with drip tray (Sad, because I can’t use it due to no oven for now. 😦 )
• 1 crab pot (that I haven’t used in years. Crab is expensive. 😦 )
• Various containers for food storage (along with the massive hoard of pasta I somehow have now acquired) some labeled but most not
• Veggie Spiralizer
• Pieces that belonged to something for shaping frosting – Frosting bag attachments??
• 1-3 independent knife sharpeners
• 1 huge whisk
• Mandolin with 5 blade options
• Various kitchen supplies
  • Includes a pair of silicone baking mitts, 3 sets of measuring cups, 3 sets of measuring spoons and 3 sizes of liquid measuring cup: 1 cup, 2 cup, 8 cup (Yes. It holds 64 oz), various spatulas, some silicone and some metal. A multitude of dough cutters, 2 food scales, rolling pin, two pizza cutters, pie cutter, cheese grater, cheese slicer, ice cream scoops (2), tiny silicone bowls for seasoning, MANY mixing bowls… etc. etc. etc.
• Italian pasta maker (have a brush for it which came separately)
• Tortilla press
• Oster Belgian Waffle Maker
• Nutribullet (includes two different blades & approximately 2-3 cups)
• Alcohol stove (metal grill obtained separately)
• My grandma’s potato masher
• My grandma’s hand mixer
• My grandma’s sifter
• My grandma’s metal tea ball strainer
• 3 piece set sifters for quinoa and/or oil and/or other things
• 2 hand held strainers
• 1 giant standalone strainer
• 2 bottle openers for corks. 3 separate tools all useful for opening capped bottles, including a military style can opener. (3 extra can openers including 1 for seniors – it’s mine)
• 1 spice rack that is unable to hold all of the spices. I have three trays in a cabinet over where my stove used to be to hold all of the spices. And that’s still not enough space. 😦
• 1 funnel that is smaller than a glue stick. -_- When I can’t find it, I panic.
• 1 butterknife ç Make that make some sense.
• 1.5 cup food processor ç What is my life?
• My grandma’s single set of tongs.
• My mom’s 16-inch pizza pan. I can’t use it right now, but I’m not gonna get rid of it.

Okay, so that is a long list. Longer than I thought. And I’m sure that there are still things missing, such as the additional ladles and slotted spoons I have.

But I digress.

What was the topic again? I’m scrolling back up to check… Heh.

Ah! Yes! As many appliances and/or cooking utensils I have, I had several that I had to toss out or just gave away because I simply couldn’t use them anymore.

So, while it’s definitely worth it to eat that pizza after 3 hours of waiting, I didn’t want to do the same for the banana pudding.

Actual Time: 810 minutes max. (Really!) 15 for prep, 20 to cook the custard, 10-15 or 20 to make the meringue (depends on how much I have to rest my wrists and 15-20 to brown the meringue in the toaster oven.

• 75-90 minutes to prep/cook/toast
• 720 minutes (12 hours) for it to sit in the fridge to properly set.
  • Never leave something like this out for longer than an hour. If you do, toss it in the trash and start over again. Better to waste ingredients than get a terrible case of food poisoning. I gave mine 15 minutes only to cool on the counter and put it in the fridge afterwards.

I ended up with 12 servings of this stuff, which I learned can be frozen. Considering the lifespan of it might only be 48 hours to 4 days, I’m so glad for the ability to freeze it. While the sugar content was ridiculously high, it was very delicious. However, I’ll be cutting the sugar down majorly the next time I make it.

A friend of mine asked me to put aside like 4 servings for her. So, I did.

One serving of this stuff has only 144 mg of sodium, but a whopping 816 grams of sugar!

By the way, this friend who wants so much of it is diabetic.

Ehm… Well, I’ll just ask her to exercise self-control while eating it.

Next time, I’m using ½ a cup of sugar instead of 2 cups like the recipe suggested. Or… Make this a rare treat that I bake.

It was heavy like you wouldn’t believe. And it tasted so good I was trying to lick the scraps out of the container.

Yep. A very rare treat.

My friend also asked me to bake her some chocolate chip cookies. I warned her I might end up making another batch of 60 again…

That’s it for now, I think. Between Saturday and Sunday I’ll work on NtC Chapter 15 and start working on Chapter 16.

Till Then!

~ J. Lyst