All about my banana bread test batch 1

Never did I think bananas would end up being one of my ingredients for baking. I have so many banana desserts lined up already. I made my first banana bread a few months ago and loved it. Recently I had the famous banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery and even thought I didn’t love the over ripeness of the banana in it, I really liked the idea of banana in puddings. So I definitely do want to try a version of that. I also made my first bananas bread test recipe without cocoa and I must say I was really happy it, although I would change a few things in my second test batch. There are a few more banana desserts on my mind.

My favourite banana breads are those that are moist, but not cake like nor bread like. They have beautifully firm yet light crumbs. I love adding chocolate to my banana bread because I feel it brings down the sometimes overpowering banana flavour. And also, chocolate makes everything better. I always end up adding cocoa powder to my banana bread. I will share that recipe soon. This is my first batch without cocoa and I must say, I was really pleased with the outcome.

For my first test batch, I decided to use whatever ingredients I had at home. I decided to make an oil based banana bread. I find butter had its own depth of flavour and I did not want any butter flavour in my final dish. I used sunflower oil. I also used all purpose flour, soda bicarbonate, white caster sugar as well as brown sugar, not too ripe bananas and eggs. That made up the base banana bread. I used walnuts because I love walnuts in banana breads, white chocolate chips, because I did not have dark chocolate chips and butterscotch pearls because I had some left for another desert that I made earlier. For additional flavouring, I used vanilla and cinnamon.

I started off by beating the eggs and the sugars with my electric hand beater, for about 4-5 minutes till it came to a ribbon stage.

 

Eggs, caster sugar and brown sugar

Ribbon stage is when the mixture is so thick it leaves ribbon like strands when the whisk is lifted

I then added the oil, little by little, while the beater running without deflating the egg mixture.

Oil is added little by little

In a separate bowl, I whisked together the flour, soda bicarb, salt and cinnamon and set that aside.

 

flour, cinnamon, bicarb and salt

all whisked together

I microwaved the bananas for a minute because they weren’t too ripe and it would be hard to mash them.

 

Before

After

I Mashed the cooled bananas, added the chocolate chips and the butterscotch pearls and mixed this in with the egg mixture.

 

Mashed the cooled bananas

Added the toasted walnuts

Followed by the butterscotch pearls and the white chocolate chips

Mixed it with the egg mixture

Finally I folded in the flour mix and baked it in a loaf tin for about 48 minutes.

Ready to bake

The resulting banana bread was beautifully caramelised on top. It has a crunchy top. the inside was perfectly moist. It had the crumbs I as looking for and every slice had walnut pieces. Coming to the taste, I was very happy with how soft it was. The banana flavour could have been more prominent. The cake could have been a bit more sweet, but I guess  using riper bananas will fix that. The cinnamon flavour just did not come through. Overall, I was more than happy with the base banana bread but in my next batch I would want to enhance the banana flavour and definitely stick to dark chocolate chips.