I love baking. That being said, I don’t bake very often. But I’m making an effort to try new recipes and bake more frequently since it is an activity that makes me extremely happy. So, when I went into the kitchen to get a banana for lunch the other day and saw the old, extremely ripe and spotted bananas left over from last week that I had been avoiding eating, I knew exactly what I had to do. As a novice baker, I took to the internet to find a simple banana bread recipe to follow that would lend itself to be easily modified for a gluten and dairy free version. Once I came across one that was easy to understand and seemed achievable, I started staging the bowls, pans, measuring cups and ingredients I would need on the counters of my kitchen so I wouldn’t be running around like a chicken without a head looking for something while holding dirty spoons and dripping partially mixed batter all over the floor.
Measuring out the dry ingredients is often the easiest part, so that was my obvious entry point for starting the banana bread baking process. Once I had the flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl, I moved onto the wet ingredients. Sugar, oil and an egg that I miraculously cracked without getting any shell in the bowl were added to a separate bowl and I reached for the whisk to combine the wet ingredients. Once they were well combined I needed to add the dry mix to the wet. That was where I made my first mistake. The slightly hydrated flour mixture started to get caked in the whisk and it was not doing me any good, so I switched over to a rubber spatula after poking the batter that was stuck in the whisk free to finish mixing. Definitely a productive solution to my laps in mixing judgement. Next was the almond milk, vanilla, and the very important mashed bananas. The risk I took here was that even though the recipe called for three bananas, I only had two overripe bananas to use. But, once I added the remaining ingredients and mixed it all together, the batter seemed to be hydrated and a good enough consistency to me, so I just continued right on ahead. I sprayed the loaf pan with Pam (hopefully with enough Pam), poured the banana bread batter into the pan and placed it in the oven for 50 minutes to start and waited with apprehensive hope to check on it once the timer binged.
Once the first 50 minutes passed, I opened the oven door to be greeted by a wonderfully risen and delightfully smelling banana bread beauty! I tested the overall done-ness with a toothpick and it came back with a bit of wet batter still so I set the oven for another 5 minutes and waited to check again. After a few more rounds of poking, checking and waiting a couple more minutes each time, the bread was ready to be taken out of the oven. It looked good for this being the first time I have made banana bread on my own from start to finish, but the process still was not over. To see how successful the bake was on the inside and if the bread would even come out of the pan without sticking, I needed to extend my patience even further and wait for it to be cool enough to handle without burning myself.
After probably waiting a bit longer than necessary, I turned it out of the pan and sliced the loaf. It turned out great! It held together well and was moist all the way through. The use of two bananas instead of three wasn’t a big deal at all in the end. It has the perfect amount of sweetness and since it’s just plain banana bread you can doctor up your slice with a drizzle of melted chocolate or peanut butter depending on how you feel to make it a bit more fancy. Baking success!
Here is a link to the recipe I used: https://myfrugaladventures.com/2015/10/copycat-banana-bread-recipe/
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