My best banana bread yet ... in the Thermomix

Each weekend, I buy bananas for the following week. I usually eat two bananas each day, one for breakfast and one for morning tea, or if I don't feel like it at morning tea, then I save it for afternoon tea.

This week, in my zeal to buy bananas, I did not count how many I needed and ended up buying too many. 4 too many to be exact.

I like my bananas still slightly green and once it starts to have brown spots on them, they become too ripe for me to eat. This happened this week on Thursday, so by Friday morning, I could not eat my remaining bananas.

Anyway, I have previously posted a banana bread recipe which I thought turned out OK but to be honest, I suck at baking and that was possibly the third or fourth banana bread recipe I had tried and while it was quite good, it wasn't perfect. Problem is, because I suck as baking, I don't actually know how to make the recipe better.

This time I asked a girlfriend if she had a good recipe and she pointed me to this one which she said she had made and turned out well. Now, I take that with a pinch of salt because she's a FANTASTIC baker and makes the most delicious baked goods. In fact, she's even thinking of starting her own bakery - she's THAT good!

After I looked at the recipe, I thought, what if I made this in the Thermomix? So I rang, my other girlfriend, the one who is a wizz with her Thermomix (she's my go to girl whenever I have a Thermomix question) and asked her how to change the recipe into a Thermomix one.

After about 20 minutes on the phone, this is the RECIPE that I ended up with:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter softened
• 1 cup sugar 250g
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 4 bananas, broken into small pieces
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

• Add sugar and grind on speed 9 for 5 - 10 seconds
• Cream together butter and sugar and eggs on speed 7 for 8 seconds
• Add crushed bananas and vanilla
• Sift together flour, soda and salt and add to bowl
• Then mix on speed 6 for 10 seconds
• Pour into greased and floured loaf pan
• Bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 40 minutes in a greased loaf tin, then check every 10 minutes until cooked
• *Cook only for 30 minutes if in muffin tray

This is baking, so I'm paranoid and I did not do anything different.

That said, instead of baking everything in a loaf tin, I put the banana bread batter into individual serves in little muffin trays so that I would have single serve banana breads. This recipe made 8 mini banana breads.

This recipe turned out to be by far the best of all my previous attempts. The Boy loved it and his words were "The other ones weren't bad, by this is a lot, lot, lot better". I'm happy when he's happy. :-) I guess this will be the recipe that I am going to be using moving forward.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd

Not cooking, but baking ... Banana Bread

The Boy has been asking for banana bread for a while now and I finally did something about it. The journey to banana bread is a long and windy one. :-)

For starters, bananas are really, really expensive here due to the floods that we had from Cyclone Yasi. The cost of bananas rose to about $15 per kilo. It's back down a bit now but even then, the bananas for the banana bread cost $10.78. To say The Boy was shocked was a surprise.

Then we went away for a month to the US and have been back and forth between The House and The Apartment since.

For those who know me, they will know I do not like baking. All that measuring, all that exactness. Plus, if you've read my other posts, you know I like to improvise and adjust things according to taste. That can't be done with baking. Bah!

Anyhow, being the good little wife that I am (ha ha ha ...) I looked up a recipe for banana bread and made it for the boy.

The first time was a bust because the bananas were not ripe enough. Don't get me wrong, it rose beautifully, smelled wonderful and tasted lovely, but just not banana-ey (is there such a word?) enough. We ate it anyway. It was lovely warmed up with gobs and gobs of butter.

Take two was much better. I had bought the bananas and I carefully nurtured them to the point of extreme mushy ripeness. They were so gross! but very good for baking. :-)

I woke up early this morning and The Boy has gone out for a long walk. I decided to bake and have the banana bread ready for breakfast when he got home from his walk. Ah ... fresh banana bread for breakfast!

Here's the RECIPE I used:

Ingredients:

• 125 grams Butter chopped and soft
• 180 grams Dark Brown Sugar
• 350 grams ripe bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon sugar
• 250 grams plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon bicarb soda
• 3 tablespoon WARM milk

Instructions:

• Prehead oven to 180dC
• Grease a bread tin and line it with baking paper
• Then, cream butter & sugar in a mixer, then scrape down sides
• Add all other ingredients and mix until well mixed
• Pour into bread tin and bake for 55 minutes or until a cake skewer comes out clean

The only thing I have done differently is that I checked the banana bread regularly before the 55 minutes was up - once at 30 minutes, then again at 45 minutes because my oven runs hot. At 30 minutes, it was quite brown on top, but split and gooey down the middle. At 45 minutes, it was almost done, so I left it for a few more minutes.

The Apartment smelled wonderful.

Are you a fan of banana bread or even baking in general? What's your favorite baked good that you can never resist when you see it in a store? Are you one to indulge or do you have tons of self control?

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd