Fresh banana bread

Over the weekend we’ve been out of the house and really busy with this and that. As a result, a few bananas that we had in the fruit bowl became really ripe. When I came home from work last night, my mother suggested that I make banana bread out of it. She’d already set out some of the ingredients for it–the butter was nice and room temperature, the eggs were counted, and bananas were laid out. She just wanted me to take care of putting it all together. I obliged because I kind of wanted some too.

I took a look at the rough recipe in her book. It really only had ingredients listed with a small instruction to blend the bananas and eggs together, but that was it. I pieced together how it all should go though from what I learnt in other cake recipes. I just put it all together while taking in some Olympic events on TV.

In a big bowl I creamed together the butter and sugar until it was all fluffy. In a separate bowl I blended the eggs and bananas together. Once they were good I combined them with the butter in the big bowl and used the hand mixer until everything was mixed nicely. In a third bowl I measured out the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. I added these dry ingredients into the wet ones little by little all while blending it all together. Before I got halfway through the flour though the batter was becoming way too dry, so that’s when I decided to start adding the milk. Thing is, when I checked the fridge it turned out we were out of milk. Damn! Well, in the end I improvised. I had some vanilla yogurt left over so I measured it out and added it. It wasn’t enough though, so I went back to the fridge and picked out another dairy product. I ended up using a good amount of 18% table cream. Now, both yogurt and cream aren’t exactly as watery as regular milk. When I blended it together it was still ridiculously thick. So, to fix the consistency I added about a half cup of water. That got it all to exactly where I wanted it.

I knew that we had some banana essence around the house; mom tends to use it whenever she makes some classic Filipino drinks. So, just for kicks I added a small amount to the batter. The smell was so strong, but I knew that it’d kick the banana factor up a notch. I actually dabbed my finger into the essence bottle to taste it. Holy crap, that stuff burns! I had no idea! I can only imagine the alcohol content for that stuff is really high. Anyway, I had enough batter for about two loaf pans. I baked it for about an hour and these are the results:

Even though it was still piping hot, I cut a slice and ate it while watching the finale for The Mole. I cursed as a hot glob of cake slowly made its way down my esophagus. I’m pretty happy with the results. I’m not sure if the cream/yogurt made a difference, or whether following proper cake procedures did the trick. Whatever the case, this experiment was a success.

Possibly related posts:

1. Improvised banana cake
2. Wonder bread
3. Loading up on the fresh stuff