OK, I realise I shouldn’t be posting quite so many recipes, but I couldn’t resist this one when Anh put it online as part of the Delicious Vietnam blogging event (a collection of blog posts celebrating the food of Vietnam, which incidentally has my own bì cuốn–and which netted me Luke Nguyen’s Indochine cookbook when I won the prize draw!).

Bánh chuối nướng literally means grilled banana cake (see how my vocabulary is improving? ), and it looks something like this:

Have I got your attention now?

(recipe under the cut)
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Aka the recipe I made when I found myself with an extra can of pineapple and some leftover chocolate. You would think that the pineapple would not go well with the chocolate–but it does, trust me. It’s actually a very yummy combination, the pineapple bringing the moisture and sugar that the chocolate lacks.

You’ll need :
- 100 g dark chocolate
- 1 can pineapple (340g, 10 slices)
- 140g sugar (and be prepared to throw in some of the juice from the can if the mixture’s too liquid, or to adjust the flour if it’s too dry)
- 120g flour
- 1 bag vanilla sugar (8g and a dash of vanilla extract otherwise)
- 2 eggs
- 125g butter

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C (gas mark 6)
2. Melt the chocolate and the butter, let the mixture cool down for a bit.
3. Meanwhile, dice the pineapple slices into smallish bits (I went for the width and length of my fingertip).
4. Mix the sugar, vanilla sugar, and the eggs. When the above chocolate-butter mixture has cooled down, add it and mix everything until the dough is smooth.
5. Prepare a low cake mould by brushing its sides with a little butter and a little flour. Pour the dough into it.
6. Cook for around 20 minutes: the cake should be still moist.

There you go–enjoy!

ETA: adjusted quantities following further experimentation

So, I did promise the recipe for the scones…

Here you go.
You will need
230 g flour
11 g baking soda
60g butter
1 teaspoon caster sugar
145 mL of milk
1 tablespoon Orange Blossom water
120g chocolate, chopped into coarse bits
Zest of half an orange, chopped into tiny bits
Pinch of salt

(makes 8-9 scones)
-Preheat the oven at 200°C. Leave the butter out to soften a bit.
-Sift the flour, the sugar and the baking soda in a bowl, and gently rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the milk little by little, until you have a spongy dough.
-Work in the orange blossom water, the orange zest and the chocolate chips until the dough is smooth and uniform.
-Grease a baking sheet. Divide the dough into 8-9 parts and shape it like cylinders (roughly 5cm across, 1cm thick). Or, if it’s too much trouble, just put dollops of the dough onto the baking sheet
-Bake for about 15-20 minutes, until the scones are risen and light golden in colour.

Those are my VD scones (though I didn’t put enough baking soda in, and ended up making oversized cookies. They are supposed to look a bit better than this normally):

Enjoy :=)

(I originally was looking for a chocolate and orange scone recipe after eating very tasty ones in Montreal, but couldn’t find one that worked on the net. In the end, I adapted this from the plain oven scones recipe contained in Scottish Teatime Recipes by Johanna Mathie)