In my house baking Banana Bread was born out of necessity. Like most people, my family buys bananas every week. Probably like most people, my family ends of throwing some of those bananas away. For me buying bananas is a magical experience. You go to the supermarket and there you find piles of delicious bananas. I sometimes get a bit irritated when I find that they are all green and will take a day or two to ripen. You wake up one day and it has happened again. The bananas have turned brown, always sooner then you ever imagined.
A family friend of mine talked about how she always bakes Banana Bread with her over ripened bananas. I thought, “Why do I never bake Banana Bread?” I searched the Internet and tried the first recipe I found. The recipe was “OK” and everyone enjoyed the Banana Bread. Finally I had the answer to over ripened bananas. Of course having this every week can be problematic, but that a story for different time.
However, I still wasn’t satisfied with the recipe. Sure it solved a problem and it did taste good, but I felt like it was lacking something. So I searched some more and I found that not all Banana Bread recipes are created equal.
Here are my modifications that I made to the original recipe I found.
Bananas – I know this sounds silly, but the bread didn’t taste enough like bananas. So, since I usually had more over ripened bananas then the original recipe called for anyway this was easy. I just increased the amount of bananas.
Granulated Sugar – The original recipe called for brown sugar. Brown sugar certainly has its place, but I usually never have brown sugar in the house and when I do I typically use it for one recipe and the rest sits in the cabinet until that one day when I search the internet for a recipe that calls for a hardened block of brown sugar. I know there are many tricks to keep this from happening, but I haven’t had much success. When I came across a recipe that used granulated sugar I was sold. My first step was to replace the brown sugar with granulated sugar.
Macadamia Nuts – I came across a recipe that added chopped nuts. The recipe called for Macadamia nuts to be exact. I love nuts so and that was a no brainer for me. The nuts are optional and the recipe will taste fine without them.
Vanilla – I added this for no other reason except that I like vanilla and I want some more liquid in the batter.
Cinnamon – This just seemed like it should be in something like Banana Bread so I added it. The recipe probably could use a little more.
The new recipe was even better then the first and I might continue to make changes. I keep you posted. For now don’t worry about the bruised bananas. Just could up a batch of this delicious Banana Bread.