Banana bread
If someone tells me that I could make enough money to live a good life by making and selling banana bread, I would tell them I would choose the broke life over mushy bananas.
I consider bananas a great fruit. They are delicious, don’t require any cutting or slicing, and are a rather affordable and accessible fruit. However, when it is banana season and you have a tree or two in your garden and your next door neighbour sends you some and then another neighbour sends you some… well, that’s how you end up forming a love hate relationship with this fruit.
But banana bread is here to save the day and make use of those rotting bananas. The recipe I used is one by Nigella Lawson, which you can find here.
I’ve followed this recipe before so I felt comfortable enough to stray a bit. We had five medium sized bananas (nethrapalam) that Amma had frozen. We don’t like chunks of banana, so I blended it until it was smooth. This is my least favourite part of banana bread making.
I hate the smell and colour of mushy bananas and these took a while to blend until smooth. But there really is no way around it.
For the raisins, I boiled and soaked them in arrack but I’ve used brandy before as well. It doesn’t alter the taste of the final product so you might as well go with a cheaper liquor. Also, don’t drain the raisins. Add that leftover booze into the batter.
I added some chopped and roasted peanuts as well to give a bit of a crunch.
Where I strayed from the recipe was with the butter, which I melted and let boil until it darkened. I can’t really say if the brown butter improved it because I can’t remember what the banana bread tasted like with regular butter.
For the sugar, I added a tablespoon of kithul treacle along with the quantity of sugar the recipe mentions. I feel like the banana bread was slightly stickier and sweeter this time but, again, I can’t say for sure.
I think these make an excellent teatime and anytime snack. I love grabbing one whenever I walk past the kitchen and they don’t too long to make. The recipe made 12 of these mini bundt cakes and 12 cupcakes (Well, 11.5 but I overfilled the bundt moulds).
