Had, yet again, some about-to-rot bananas in the fridge. Not sure what the issue is, but lately all that I buy go off at about 4x the normal speed, I swear. Am aware that banana bread exists. So...
Never made any before (yes, I did get through the pandemic without it), so started from here, then got annoyed at how the (mobile) website was set up and needed excessive amounts of scrolling to get to the points, not to mention all the ads, so proceeded to improvise.
Main findings:
The amount of sugar in an American recipe is BONKERS! By default lessened the amount prescribed and the result was still absurdly sweet. Next time 1/2 sugar, no more. No wonder there seem to be no human sized humans left there...
Making of the whole recipe only used one large and one small bowl, a couple of spoons and the baking trough making the process from prep to cleanup incredibly low effort. And I am all for that.
What I actually did + note for next time:
- Peel 4 small bananas into large mixing bowl, smush them with a fork - this actually hurt my hand, not sure whether due to body condition or whether the bananas were actually less ripe than they looked or what, in any case need to think about better mashing method, maybe slice before? Also, better to use 5 small bananas.
- Break 3 eggs on top of the bananamush and whip them with the fork first without disturbing the bottom layer to get some air in there, then all together.
- Weigh 60g of unsalted (duh!) butter and about 20g of coconut oil into small ceramic bowl, put into micro for 30 sec to melt, mix, another 30 sec heat, onto counter to cool, then pour into main bowl.
- 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract into the main bowl.
- Add 1 teaspoon of baking soda.
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
- 100g of low processed cane sugar - recipe was 150g of white chemical sugar, 100g of a more normal one turned out to be excessive, next time 75g of the least processed I have.
- 225g of various (mostly) gluten free flours (this time had about 75g of leftover rye flour mix, 1 megatablespoon / around 20g of potato starch, and the rest of the amount was made up with "premade gluten free rice flower for baking", which I presume also had some "gluten imitating chemicals" because there were absolutely no issues with the dough rising or keeping shape after cooling. With a different flour mix might actually have to mess around with xantham gum etc.
- 5 scoops of dried cranberries because I had them and thought to make it more interesting - turns out D really did not like that idea, so fine, no extra fruit next time.. sad me. Making this for anyone else, I think dried pineapple bits would be awesome. Just need to lessen the amount of sugar even further then. Wet fruit would make cooking the loaf thoroughly more complicated.
- Oven to preheat at 180C - 170 next time, the top got too brown too fast.
- Cooking paper to line a pyrex loaf mold, a tablespoon of coconut oil spread in it for yummier crust.
- Batter into the mold, into oven.
- Cook at 180 C for about 30 min, then realise the temperature is a bit too high and turn it to 170 for about another 30 min - next time just do 170C and 1 hr, obviously. May also experiment with brushing the crust with coconut oil or egg mix in the hopes to keep it unburnt and less cracked?
- Toothpick test.
- Discard the instructions to wait until cool and serve immediately with a piece of chocolate to melt on top. Vanilla ice cream would be great too. I mean, like it wasn't with pretty much any baked good ever...
Cheers,
Hedi
