Comments on: Going Bananas…

By: IrrationalPoint

IrrationalPoint — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:23:45 +0000

Sounds delicious. In our house we also sometimes cook very rip bananas in orange juice, cinnamon, and allspice, and have it for breakfast or as a dessert (although if for the latter, we often flame it).

Enjoy eating it.

–IP

By: nigel

nigel — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:41:34 +0000

Sorry in the last sentence of my comment, I meant to write “according”, not accorded.

By: nigel

nigel — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:55:15 +0000

Banana bread sounds interesting. I expect the presence of banana makes it moist. What I do with overripe bananas is to put them in a blender with milk and ice, and make a milkshake. The banana flavour is diluted accorded to the ratio of banana to milk used.

By: Eleanor

Eleanor — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:20:26 +0000

Mmmm.. Banana bread - yum! I freeze bananas when they get too ripe for me to eat for use later in baking. Your recipe looks extremely similar to mine, though I don’t melt the butter, and I usually use sherry or marsala for the fruit soaking as I don’t have rum. And I am not so convinced by the necessity of the “share” injunction - it does keep well for a few days, after all!

Have you added overripe banana to pancakes before? They come out surprisingly light…

anne: skewers are good for poking too.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:09:38 +0000

Hi Anne,

Yes I know about the chopstick use. In fact, I usually use wooden skewers when baking for others.

When baking something for me that is going to be gobbled up in about two days (as was the case here… ahem…) I am less particular about what I test with…

Will look at some of the material you mentioned… thanks! (I’ve browsed McGee before, I think, but don’t own.)

-cvj

By: anne

anne — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:41:39 +0000

Very nice. Chopsticks, you know, are a very good way to measure done-ness. They don’t leave the gash of the everyday knife, as the batter seems to molt back around the initial poke. And nobody suspects!
Also, there are so many gradations between pure white G&H sugar and molasses that are fun to tinker with. Turbinado, all the Japanese and South Seas and Okinawan stuff, etc.. I think Trader Joe’s has several, so it’s easy enough to fool around with, and kind of fun. It comes in different shapes sometimes, but you’ll figure it out.
Chocolate chips can also be a good addition, tho the melting point is different. They can save dried-out cake with melti-ness, I have found.
Do you know Harold McGee? “On Food and Cooking.” There’s a new edition. Lots of good shorthand and references, for explaining the physical props and the reasons why you enjoy the stuff, in lay-person’s terms. I mean, you might as well make those terms up, but he already did it, one version, so why not ride on it, and so on? (That’s a rhetorical question.).

By: Plato

Plato — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:38:37 +0000

Splenda helps?

By: Clifford

Clifford — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:53:13 +0000

Jude:- Yes, it is a shame that the typical grocery store has maybe a couple of the most straightforward varieties.

Moshe:- Actually, I think I agree with you. I cut the sugar in this recipe down by 1/4 to 1/3, but it was still a bit more sweet than I thought was necessary.

Cheers,

-cvj

By: Moshe

Moshe — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:01:53 +0000

Predictable sugar comment: to me banana bread needs no added sugar at all, made it before with no sugar added, it is quite sweet if the bananas are ripe. Since there is no other flavor (e.g the sourness of berries) it is really easy to cross the line into the sickeningly sweet territory.

By: Jude

Jude — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:33:03 +0000

On my first trip to Mexico as a kid, our friend showed us his banana plantation. He was smitten by bananas, so along with the tour, we learned about their propagation, the vast number of banana species, and other esoteric banana facts. I discovered the hard way that some species of bananas are edible only when cooked.