Right off, I had to modify it for a few reasons. First, I found I had no flour. Oh, I had had flour before Christmas, but when my visiting daughter decided to make cookies for her boyfriend and us, she opened up a "new" package and asked me if it was still good. I put my nose in it and did not get a nice fresh smell - rather, something on the okay side of stale. Since I had some more in my flour canister, I told her with a wave of the hand to toss it.
So it was that when I embarked on my very-best-banana-bread recipe, I not only had no flour (she had emptied the canister, she told me woefully), but I had no "okay" flour either. It was -15C outside so I had no desire to jump in the car and drive to the Metro.
I was burrowing in my pantry closet in search of any kind of flour, any kind at all. I came up with hominy grits and whey, which hubbub had bought me for Christmas (no inside joke, just him being silly), lots of rice - basmati, short-grain brown, arborio, long-grain brown; lots of sugar - confectioners's, fast-dissolving, sugar cubes, cane; lots of coconut - shredded, small flake, large flake, sweetened, unsweetened; lots of bouillon cubes - chicken, beef, vegetable; lots of pasta (too many kinds to list) -- but no flour. Except....!....Wondra!... that wonder of gravy thickeners, the one I buy by the armful in NewYork because we don't have it here.
That's how this very fine (both meanings of the word) flour became the flour I put into my banana bread. I imagined a lovely smooth texture instead of the usual coarse one - which I like - as a nice alternative.
After I puréed my bananas, I saw that they only came to 12 oz. instead of the prescribed 16. That meant doing math throughout the recipe, which I don't really mind at all - keeps the brain pointy. :)
This is how I got into a little more trouble. My best friend phoned from Connecticut and when I told her that I was in the middle of assembling my loaf and needed another 10 minutes, she said she'd phone back in 15.
Now I found myself in a race, running back and forth to the computer after each ingredient addition (my printer's upstairs) because I have short-term memory problems and can only remember one just-learned item (like phone numbers) at a time. Because of the search for flour, I lost time (hoping my friend would give me a larger window before phoning back). I was almost finished, but the loaf was still not in the oven, when the phone rang, just one minute after the prescribed time. What a time to be on time!
When my friend heard my saga, she promptly said she'd phone back again and told me to get that bread into the oven!
That's when I remembered I had forgotten to add the walnuts. The nuts are optional, but to me, banana bread is not banana bread without nuts. I chopped up a large pile of fresh walnuts and stirred them into the mixture which was already in the loaf pan.
Loaf pan into the oven and me back to the computer. I checked the ingredient list and, damn!... saw that I had forgotten the baking powder. In my sprints between the kitchen stove, the computer, and the telephone, I had jumped from right from baking soda to salt. There was no way to add the BS now, so I just resigned myself to an end result of "Not the BBB". I had already wondered if I had lost the BBB title when I had to add Coke Zero because there was no Coca-Cola in the house. I don't think the "best" of anything ever has aspartame as an ingredient!
Nonetheless, and as you can see from the picture, the finished banana loaf looked splendid! Tastewise, it was okay, definitely not the BBB I had set out to make. However, hubbab, finding the still warm loaf when he came home, ate several large slices and came upstairs to exclaim, "I just can't stop eating your banana bread! It's so delicious!" I count that as a victory of sorts.
But, maybe it was the lemon juice I poured over the loaf after I tasted it and decided it wasn't moist enough. Citrus fixes everything!
Here's the recipe for you to try. I'm curious to know if, prepared to the letter, it will qualify for the title.
- 2 cups very ripe pureed bananas (approx. 6 bananas)
- 2 1/2 cups dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup oil (if your prefer, you may sub. melted, unsalted butter)
- 4 eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoons cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup Coca-Cola
- 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
Preheat over to 300 degrees F.
1. Spray two 9 X 5 inch loaf pans with non-stick cooking spray.
2. Using your food processor, puree the bananas, then remove the puree to another bowl and set aside. No need to clean the work bowl of your food processor, just add together and blend well the sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla.
3. Measure and mix together, in a separate bowl, all the dry ingredients except the nuts.
4. Return banana puree to processor work bowl.
5. Add dry ingredients and blend, pouring in the coca cola as mixture is blending together.
6. Blend until smooth, about 1 minute.
7. Blend in nuts by hand.
8. Divide mixture between the two loaf pans.
9. Place loaf pans on a baking sheet in the oven.
10. Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes OR until loaves test done in the middle with a toothpick.
11. Let cool about 10-15 minutes then turn loaves out of pans to finish cooling.
These loaves keep well or can be frozen.
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