Sunday, March 05, 2006

Sunday morning banana bread.



Making some time to browse on the internet + 3 ripe bananas = Sunday morning banana bread .

It was my turn to get up at 6.30am with Gabi (and today was actually a sleep-in for her) so what else to do but make use of my extra time making this banana bread that I found on my latest favourite baking resource.

As usual, while the recipe (below) is to be credited to the Joy of Baking website I have replicated it here for my future reference.

While baking the bread, I was a little disappointed that I didn't think of substituting wholemeal flour for the white flour and brown sugar for the refined sugar. In the end because once I started thinking about the brown sugar and couldn't stop, I decided to make a coconut and brown sugar concoction to add to the top of the cake. It was lovely and did smell extra scrumptious while baking, but in retrospect it is something I think you could add the top in the last 20 minutes. It made eating the cake a little messier. I also added lots of pecans (as suggested) to mine as I love, love, love them at the moment.

My only other hint, is to watch the timing, I was in danger of letting mine be on the dry side.

But when I came home this afternoon after a few hours at work, my fears of a dry bread were not realised because while I was away, with the rainy weather the boys indulged themselves in a game of Risk and quite a few slices of banana bread. I think there is about one quarter of the loaf left. So much for school lunches.

Recipe for Banana Bread
1 3/4 cups (245 grams) plain flour
3/4 cup (150 grams) castor sugar
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup (115 grams) toasted walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped (optional- not for me)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
8 tablespoons (113 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 very ripe large bananas (approximately 1 pound or 454 grams), mashed well (about 1-1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Garnish:
large banana, sliced (Optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place oven rack to middle position. Butter and flour (or spray with a non stick vegetable/flour spray) the bottom and sides of an 8-cup loaf pan (9 x 5 x 3 inch) (23 x 13 x 8 cm). Set aside.

Place the pecans on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes or until lightly toasted. Let cool and then chop coarsely.

In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nuts. Set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl combine the mashed bananas, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla. With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, lightly fold the wet ingredients (banana mixture) into the dry ingredients until just combined and batter is thick and chunky. (The important thing is not to over mix the batter. You do not want it smooth. Over mixing the batter will yield tough, rubbery muffins or breads.)

Scrape batter into prepared pan and place the slices of banana on top of the batter for garnish. Bake until bread is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 to 60 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool and then remove the bread from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 1 loaf which will be eaten in less than 8 hours if left on a rainy day with three hungry young men and a board game to occupy themselves.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I stumbled upon your recipes purely by chance. I have never heard of 'blogging'! Still dont know what it is!! I just love your recipes. The presentation is great, the recipes are fab, they look wonderful and I cant wait to try the ones I havent made and love the ones I have. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas. It has kick started me into cooking and baking some original stuff having been stuck in a rut for a while. You know how it is, mental block on what to cook for the family that is easy, tasty, everyone likes and is GOOD FOR YOU! None of that shop bought rubbish! Thank you thank you. Kindest regards from blighty!!

Amanda said...

Hi Nellie

How lovely of you to comment so - I really appreciate the time and the spontaneous gesture given your so new to the world of blogging - I recall the excitement when I first discovered this "other world".

I encourage you to try some of my links there are people blogging on food out there who are so much better than me - it's great to have so much variety.

I am very happy though to have been the weblog to inspire you to cook again.

While there are recipe books, it is great to see ordinary folk having a go where celebrities and chefs are too. I think we bloggers are the ordinary peoples review of those fancy recipes too which I think is even more useful than their recipes themselves.

In my experience the food blogging community are very nice people - even though I have never met one! I only discovered blogging about 18 months ago and love the sense of "community" it can provide in such a big big world, plus the recipes - we hardly have to buy cookbooks really!

Your very welcome to my site, and I will continue to post recipes, I may be sporadic but I don't think I will be giving up cooking and baking.

About Me

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Mother of two with one of each. Wife of one.Dogless. Busy working five days a week, baking and cooking when time allows. Writing rarely these days. Wishing I had time to read more often.