Like many of you, I’ve spent most of iso baking and crying. This means trawling recipe sites like Bon Appetit in search of new, exciting things to bake (then cry while waiting for them to bake).
One that stood out to me this week was their “Best Ever” banana bread. Get this chaotic energy:
Here at BA everybody has their favorite banana bread recipe. We made every one—14 to be exact—until we came up with a collective favorite.
How psycho is it how Americans don’t put a “u” in “favourite”? So weird. Anyway! Making fourteen different banana breads to determine the one true king is a mood I can get behind. I decided to whip up their famous banana bread and see if Bon Appetit made the right decision.
The recipe is a LOT. Half a stick of butter. One cup of packed dark brown sugar. MARSCAPONE. I love me some buttery, sugary goodness but that is a real level of OTT, you know?
To start with they made me grease, then line, a baking dish. Mine looked like this:
I am already concerned my banana bread is gonna come out all lumpy, because I just CANNOT get the paper to stick to the sides. Oh well. Gotta do what Bon Appetit tells me.
Then I blend all the powdery things together, including the salt. I used my combined salt/pepper grinder and got pepper in it.
Again – OH WELL. What is baking if not a bit of trial and error? I’m sure Maggie Beer says that all the time. She totally gets pepper in her sweet dishes and just makes it work.
Now to beat some squishy ingredients. I use Mum’s hand mixer circa 1985. Seriously, look at this thing.
This is what I’m blending, by the way. BUTTER. MARSCAPONE. BROWN SUGAR.
Then I just mix that with the powder things, and add some walnuts. They were optional but what is banana bread without nuts in it? Fuck guys. They’re mandatory, surely.
There was also optional chocolate but that is the devil’s work. Don’t mix your sugary treats. Here’s what it looked like before the oven.
I left it in for the allotted 60 minutes, which turned out to be too long. Bon Appetit said set the oven at 180C!
I was all like “it’s still good, it’s still good”, very this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LTgNVwfMAE
And it turned out – it was still good?
Here’s my dumb shit food review, cos I’m not a food reviewer. The dark brown sugar caramelised perfectly to make the outer layer really crisp and crunchy. It was SO moist inside, like perfectly moist. I wanna say moist again. Moist.
The ratio of banana to cake vibe was heavenly. Not too overly banana, not to dry and cakey. IDK if it was the marscapone or the half stick of butter, but I damn near orgasmed having my first slice.
It is also demonic for the waist line if you’re trying not to grow out of your jeans right now, but also who cares live your life etc.
Maybe just don’t eat the whole log in one sitting.
