Silver Palate Banana Bread

We were cleaning out the basement freezer and to my suprise, there were frozen bananas! I can't believe it's my fourth banana bread post (I made it here - CI's version, here - lower fat and here - with chocolate chips). Seriously, can anyone ever have too much banana bread?! A while ago, I saw a recipe for banana bread from the Silver Palate Cookbook that I wanted to try because compared to others I've tried, there was no added liquid (milk, buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt). When you consider how much banana is used, I guess more liquid isn't reallly necessary.

This banana bread was really delicious! The texture was soft and light compared to CI's version. It may have been a little too light for banana bread standards, but that's because while the butter, sugar and eggs were creaming, I was trying to multitask by doing dishes at the same time and left the mixer running a lot longer than usual. If you're into dense and chewy, I would try this recipe using the muffin method by melting the butter instead of creaming (or just not overcream like me..haha) because the flavour was amazing!. Doesn't it feel like sometimes that no matter how much banana is added the flavour is still weak, but at the same time adding more banana might turn the bread into mush? I love strong banana flavour, but when there are equal or more cups of banana then flour, it starts feeling gummy to me. I think the yogurt in my previous go-to recipe from CI mutes the flavour of the bananas and makes the batter too wet. The best part about this recipe was not having to wait for the centre to cook while sacrificing the rest of the loaf although I would have to bake this in a loaf pan to be sure (need Goldtouch now!). Bundt pans have way more surface area and allow for even baking. My favourite are the ones from Nordicware, which are just so heavy sometimes I feel like I might drop my cake while I'm pulling it out from my oven.

The only question is, how much banana is in 3 bananas? Mine came to 1 1/4 cup. Since that was close to the 1 1/2 cup in CI's recipe, I didn't bother adding another banana. I don't think I would use less than 1 1/4 cup of bananas though or else it probably won't be flavourful enough. There are still 3 frozen bananas left. Maybe next time I'll be confident enough to break into a bag of whole wheat flour, we'll see...

Silver Palate Cookbook Banana Bread: (makes 1 loaf)

8 T unsalted butter, room temp
3/4 c granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 c unbleached all-purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 c whole wheat flour (I used all purpose)
3 large ripe bananas, mashed (1 1/4 cups - 1 1/2 cups)
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 c walnuts, coarsely chopped (I omitted)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan. (I used a bundt pan)
2. Mix flour, soda, salt together
3. Mash bananas with a fork, add vanilla to the banana mixture.
4. Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time and beat.
5. Alternately add dry and wet ingredients to butter mixture, beginning and ending with the dry (dry-wet-dry-wet-dry)
6. Pour into pan. Bake 50-60 min, or until cake tester comes out clean (I look for a few mini moist crumbs). Cool in pan 10 min, then on rack.