Sunday surprise: Banana bread photo recipe 11 May 2008 7:53 pm
Posted by Tracy in : baking,cooking,dessert,events,pictures,recipes , trackbackHappy Sunday, all! Some of you (hi, Liz!) may remember this banana bread from this recipe here, which I posted sans illustrations because Liz asked nicely, just a few days before the announcement of Not Quite Nigella’s Banana Bread Bake-Off. Now, at long last, here’s the illustrated version I first alluded to more than a month ago. The finished product looks like this:
which is to say, pretty darn tasty. Now, here’s how to make it:
Preheat the oven and generously butter a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan:
Next, you’ll need some nice ripe bananas 
(2 or 3 of them, depending on their size). These are extra-brown because they’d been stored in the freezer for banana bread-making purposes, but had just thawed to readiness, i.e. mushy peelability, when the picture was taken.
(By the way, those are black beans and pintos in the background, in case you were wondering, and my own hand-written favorite recipes book off to the right. But I digress.) Mash the bananas with 1/2 cup strong black coffee:
to yield about 1 1/2 cups of banana-coffee moosh. It’ll look something like this if you use a fork, but you can purée everything in a blender if you prefer a smoother consistency (and no chance of big lumps of banana in your finished bread):
Next, beat together 3/4 cup butter (salted or unsalted are both fine) and 7/8 cup packed brown sugar (3/4 cup plus 2 TB, if you prefer):
Next, add two eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each:
and when the batter’s fluffy (like in the picture shown above), add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
and 1/2 teaspoon amaretto (or almond extract or more vanilla if that’s all you’ve got) and 1/2 teaspoon orange rind if you’ve got it (full disclosure: I’ve never actually followed this step but I’m pretty sure it would be entirely awesome).
What’s that in the bowl behind the wet ingredients, you may well be asking. Well, that would be the whisked-together dry ingredients: 2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon table salt (or 1 teaspoon kosher salt), 1/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 teaspoon cinnamon. I took pictures of them but they came out kind of blurry, so just imagine a bowl of white powder topped with more white and brown powders, then all kind of beige-ish when it’s mixed together. ANYWAY. To finish the batter, you combine the wet and dry ingredients, first some dry, then some wet, and then some dry again, making sure to start and finish with the dry ingredients, and finally 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts:
DO NOT OVERMIX THE BATTER. Seriously. It’s okay to have some streaks of flour. Um, okay, I’m back under control now, really. Spread the batter in the prepared baking pan:
and bake at 350 degrees F for at least 60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Remove the bread from the oven (don’t forget to turn the oven off; I’m really bad about this) and cool it in the pan on a rack for at least ten minutes before trying to take it out:
Then try to resist cutting into it for an hour, so it isn’t too mushy when you try to get a slice of all that goodness.
Mmmm, banana bread. Once again, this post is dedicated to Not Quite Nigella’s Banana Bread Bake-Off, which I read about on Is My Blog Burning?
