I'm pretty much the worst person alive when it comes to preparing food or baking or cooking. It just is not appealing to me, and I've got very little interest in the entire "getting food onto a table" game. Preferably, someone just brings food right to my face and all I have to do is open my mouth and move my jaw a few times for chewing. Since that doesn't happen super often, sometimes (very rarely) I put on my Chef Bailey hat and get all Ina Garten-y in the kitch.
Well... I try to anyway.
Recently I made what
I considered to be a valiant attempt at making some baked banana chips. I took inspiration from the ladies at
A Beautiful Mess, who posted an incredibly simple recipe for Sweet & Salty Banana Chips back in March (pin
here).
I mean.... like a really, really simple recipe. So simple that it seemed like it would be a douche move for me
not to try it out myself.
Here's what you need:
- as many not-quite-ready-to-eat-yet, under ripe bananas as you feel like dealing with
- some brown sugar (I was so gung-ho about trying this recipe that I actually went out and bought myself some brown sugar. God knows I didn't have any on hand.)
- sea salt & pepper (Didn't have sea salt, so I used regular table salt and it wasn't the end of the world. Believe me, the salt wasn't the problem with what happened next.)
So, here's something important that apparently you really need if you don't want this recipe to turn into a big, beautiful mess (haha, see what I did there?): a silpat mat. What's that, you ask? I still don't know, exactly. But here's what I do know: aluminum foil will
not suffice as a substitute for one of these little guys. #AsItTurnsOut. Mistake #1.
Here's the embarrassingly simple step-by-step that I still somehow managed to maul:
1. Slice bananas thinly - but #FORGODSSAKE not too thinly. Mistake #2.
2. Coat banana slices
lightly (Mistake #3) with brown sugar on both sides.
3. Put a bit of olive oil on your
aluminum foil silpat mat (see Mistake #1) and set it into a baking sheet. Place banana slices on your sheet and hit them all with some of that good ol' S&P.
4. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes, until the edges are becoming crispy.
5. Eat the hell out of it.
It all looks pretty effing good doesn't it? Like maybe it wouldn't end up being a huge gigantic failure of a homemade chips adventure?
Wrong.
I couldn't get them off the foil!!! Those tiny little discs of sweet/salty banana goodness would
not come up - the centers were all stuck to the sheet. It got to the point that tiny bits of foil were beginning to come up
with the banana as I tried to finagle them off the baking sheet. At that point I knew I couldn't risk feeding myself or my darling David any foil-ladden banana chips. (I hear they're not as great as Activia is for your digestive system.) The entire sheet of foil - delicious looking banana chips and all - ended up in the garbage. #WompWommmmp
Drat. They looked so golden. They were so aromatic. The chips that I
did manage to remove from the foil were such a perfect mixture of sweet and salty... And the cracked black pepper was such an amazing touch.
Ultimately, I'm not going to buy a silpat mat. Maybe some parchment paper would do the trick? I've got to try making these banana chips again. Now that I've had a taste, I need more!!
If you want to see how it's supposed to turn out, check out
A Beautiful Mess.
Want to have another laugh at my expense? Check out my
Argyle Nail Fail.
