Seriously, who doesn’t love peanut butter and bananas? It’s the food of kings – or the King, Elvis Presley. I know you’ll fall head over heels for this recipe and for Toye. She’s got a bit of quirk and sass and a whole lot of real in her (I mean, she loves orphans – so she’s like kin to me). And she can swing a mean hammer. Thank you, Toye, for sharing a perfect story and dessert!
Okay, okay. You can’t really live off of cheesecake; Your pants will never fit! Once in a while though, it is completely and perfectly acceptable to eat cheesecake: when it’s your friend’s birthday party and she gives you permission to make up whatever you want. Now, you may be wondering where I came up with the idea for the Banana Nutter Butter Cheesecake. My Husband thinks peanut butter is a food group, and I happen to have a thing for banana pudding in the warmer months. Elvis liked peanut butter and bananas together so you could say Elvis won, or that we combined our interests. It turned out wonderful in part thanks to all the prayers I prayed over it. If you’ve never made a cheesecake, they are time consuming, expensive, and hard to perfect. My prayer was something like, “Dear Jesus, Please let this turn out right. It’s for my FRIEND and her BIRTHDAY… AND PARTY.” The good news is that no matter how ridiculous I felt praying that prayer, He heard me and it wasn’t too hard after all! The result was the lightest and most humble cheesecake I’ve ever tasted. By humble I mean it is big on flavor and beautiful, but not too rich.
Banana Nutter Butter Cheesecake
Prep time: 30 minutes
Bake time: 40 minutes
Chill time: minimum of 3 hours
Total time: minimum of 4 hours, 10 minutes
Crust
1 (16oz) package of Nutter Butter cookies
½ stick of melted butter
Grease the bottom and sides of a 10-inch springform pan and preheat the oven to 350°. Now you are going to take 12 of the Nutter Butter cookies and put them in a plastic bag to smash. You can use a hammer or rolling pin, just as long as you end up with fine cookie particles for the crust.
Now take your melted butter and mix it with the crumbs in a small mixing bowl. Once it’s nice and crumbly, press the mixture into the bottom of the springform pan. Put 12 Nutter Butters in the same plastic bag you used before, but this time only smash them in to chunks. Set these chunks aside, because they will bring a party in each bite!
Cheesecake
3 (8oz) packages of cream cheese, at room temperature
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup sour cream, at room temperature
¾ cup peanut butter
½ cup banana, mashed
4 eggs, at room temperature
In a large mixing bowl, mix the cream cheese by itself until smooth, then combine the above ingredients in order. Make sure to add the eggs slowly, one at a time. If clumps start to form, use a food processor or sieve to smooth it out. Now it’s time to add in your chunky Nutter Butters. When you have everything well mixed it will look like banana pudding with wafers, but don’t eat it just yet! Line your springform pan with aluminum foil all the way around the bottom and up the sides. This will aid us in preparing for the water bath to come. Pour the cheesecake batter into your springform pan with the Nutter Butter crust and follow step 1 for making a water bath before you bake the cheesecake for 40 minutes. Having the cheesecake sit in a water bath helps to ensure little cracking and burning.
After 40 minutes, take the cheesecake out and turn the oven off. Don’t worry if the center is wobbly or dark in color. It won’t taste burnt. Let the cheesecake set out for an hour to ensure that your cheesecake won’t sink. Then refrigerate for 2 hours minimum. When your cheesecake is done, slice up 1 ½ bananas and place them on top to cover it. To make it look fancy, I bought some whipped cream and made a design around the edges. You could just sprinkle some Nutter Butter crumbs on top of the bananas and be done, but I decided it needs a sauce. Enter a yummy caramel sauce and you have perfection in 10 minutes!! When the sauce is done, you can use a spoon or pipe the caramel sauce in a criss-cross design on top of the bananas and then garnish it with crumbs from the left over Nutter Butter cookies. Since I was taking it for a friend’s birthday party, I left it in the springform pan.
Save the extra caramel sauce for individual slices. Trust me, you will want more! Isn’t she beautiful?!
Not only was she beautiful, but she tasted light and delectable. One person at the party called my Banana Nutter Butter Cheesecake a “ticket to Heaven” telling another person, she’d better get a slice unless she wanted to miss out on going to Heaven. Then there were a few of us ladies who swore we were going to share a piece with our spouse because it is cheesecake afterall. Let me tell you, both of the spouses ended up needing their own slice!
If you’ve been looking for a new cheesecake recipe or just a new challenge in the kitchen, give this recipe a try and make the caramel sauce to go with. Give yourself plenty of time and pray your way through it. God cares about everything. He will guide you and you will have learned a new skill.
Disclaimer: I am not responsible for how many slices you eat or the pants that don’t fit afterward.
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Toye is a Loan Specialist with the Department of Veterans Affairs by day, and a Kitchenista by night. You can find her playing around in the kitchen, entertaining, and blogging at www.dishuplove.com. In her spare time, she likes hanging out with her husband, Kyle, and Rat Terrier, Pogo. She also has a passion for serving children, widows, and refugees in her community in Nashville.