Chrissy Teigen ‘Cravings’ tickles your ribs
We know that Chrissy Teigen is funny. And she can cook. But how many cookbook authors can stir up both a Twitter sensation and our appetites by putting out a plea for brown bananas with a promise of a signed cookbook and a pair of husband John Legend’s underwear?
The famous (or infamous) Banana Bread recipe can be found in Teigen’s new cookbook, “Cravings: Hungry for More” (Clarkson Potter), the follow-up to her 2016 USA TODAY No. 1 best-seller “Cravings.”
Seriously, when was the last time a cookbook made you laugh out loud?
Here are five passages in Teigen’s new book that made us chuckle and left us craving more:
On her recipe-testing experiment on Twitter
“Yes. This is THE banana bread. The bread that launched a million tweets and a hundred thousand Instagram tags, and had people all along the California coast offering to trade their brownest bananas for a makeup palette, a pair of John’s used underwear (it was clean; I’m not an animal), and the chance to meet my trusty assistant/ mom, @PepperThai2.”
On writing new recipes post-baby
“I had dreams of finding out what the hell is in the seasoning for Cool Ranch Doritos, but even if I did find it, I can’t do that to you. Forcing you to make Cool Ranch dust for this downhome, familystaple taco salad would be very Book 1. Book 2, post-Luna Chrissy says to buy the bag and crush them up. Who knows what laziness Book 3 Chrissy will come up with at this baby-making rate.”
On having a glam squad
“I hate saying it, but I have a glam squad. ... If you have seen me out and I am not wearing my hair in a top-knot, it means I have been sitting in a chair for 21⁄ hours getting head-to-toe makeup (yes, toe, seriously) and my extension-filled locks have been blown and braided to perfection. What does this have to do with onion dip, you ask?”
On her life-long relationship with Subway
“Bbasically I have consumed approximately 8.1 million meatballs, which makes me just 0.9 meatballs away from being an expert meatball connoisseur.”
On her love of American cheese
“The most patriotic I get is my love for American cheese. I actually just googled ‘what is cheese’ to see if American even fits the criteria for actual, authentic cheese. ... So to anyone that wants to question my love of American cheese, you can suck it! Don’t challenge my patriotism.”
Twitter’s (And Uncle Mike’s) Banana Bread Ingredients:
2 cups mashed very ripe bananas*
4 eggs
2⁄3 cup canola oil, plus a little more to grease the pan
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little more for dusting the pan
2 cups sugar
1 (3.5-ounce) box vanilla instant pudding mix**
1 teaspoon baking soda
11⁄ teaspoons kosher salt 2
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1 (3.5-ounce) bar dark chocolate, chopped into chunks
Salted butter, for serving
Directions
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
In a large bowl, combine the mashed bananas, eggs, and oil. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, sugar, pudding mix, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and combine well BUT GENTLY. I swear this came out differently when I used an aggressive electric mixer. Fold in the coconut and chocolate chunks.
Grease and flour a Bundt pan (that means wipe a little grease all over the inside of the pan, dust it with flour, and tip it upside down to shake out any extra flour). Pour the batter into the pan. (This can also make two 8 × 4-inch loaves, but it’s so much more moist in one Bundt pan!) Bake until the cake springs back when lightly pressed and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes. (Test it with a toothpick at around 50 minutes.) Let it cool slightly in the pan, then use a butter knife to gently release the cake from the sides of the pan and around the inner circle, then flip it onto a plate.
Let it cool and cut it into slices. Rewarm them and serve them with salty butter!!
*Get six brown bananas. Not four. Not five. Six. You will think you only need five because it looks like enough, but it will not be enough. You will get five, you will mash them, you will be about half an inch short and that makes a difference and you cannot get around it. Trust me.
**I won’t tell you what brand to use, but the right brand rhymes with smello. Don’t use banana-flavored pudding mix. I tried it. It is gross.
Recipes and photographs reprinted from Cravings: Hungry for More. Copyright © 2018 by Chrissy Teigen.