#9 Twice-Baked Banana Bread
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Apologies for the radio silence. The first weekend I went fishing and didn’t bake.
The second weekend, I sulked because I didn’t catch anything the previous weekend. Yes, I am posing with another man’s fish.
Every baker dreads the day that their bake fails. Some lose sleep, some pray, and others constantly search for a scapegoat—something or someone to take the fall in the unlikely event that dark day comes. And people find those scapegoats. A quick forward pass to a bad batch of flour, or a hospital throw to a grieving aunt. Maybe the temperature wasn’t right. Or the humidity messed with the yeast.
I do not need such crutches. Not me. I take these baking bumps on the chin. Because, as Rocky Balboa said, with his now over-used platitude, “it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, it matters how often you get up.”
And, after all, these are the lessons we use to build experience. These are the trials we overcome to find greatness. And these are the fires that forge steel-like resolve.
Also, my son turned the oven near off halfway, which obviously screwed the whole thing up. Totes wasn’t my fault.
This is Twice-Baked Banana Bread.
Ingredients
3 one-week-old bananas (they need to be on the other side of ripe)
200g brown sugar (I used demerara sugar instead because I ran out of brown and I was hoping it would come out like cookies. But this definitely didn’t ruin the bake, even though I didn’t change anything else in the recipe to compensate)
150g butter (make sure it’s soft so it mixes properly. I used butter straight from the fridge and ended up with lumps that wouldn’t mix in. But this didn’t ruin the bake either, even though the butter melted into weird fat pockets)
2 eggs (in the spirit of the rest of the ingredients, I looked for duck eggs but couldn’t find any)
240g cake flour (I used Snowflake. Too fresh to flop my ass)
2 tsp baking powder (baking powder is awfully unexciting)
1⁄4 tsp sea salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Mix the bananas three until smooth with a mixer.
Add the sugar (200g), butter (150g), and eggs (2).
Mix the flour, salt and baking powder in a separate bowl.
Slowly add the flour stuff to the banana stuff with the mixer on low.
Grease a bread tin. For God’s sake, grease a freaking tin. I didn’t, but it definitely didn’t ruin the bake.
Bake it for 55 minutes. Get someone to turn the oven down to 50° at an indiscernible point. Take it out. It should be severely underdone.
Put it back into the oven for another 15 minutes.
Realise the oven is cold about 14 minutes in— my glasses didn’t mist up when I opened the oven— then turn the temperature back to 180°. Wait about 10 minutes, when the oven has just reached temperature again, and remove the tin.
Throw the whole thing away and get a different, decent recipe.
Or, if you decide to soldier on, let it cool before you cut it. Come to think of it, I think this the mistake that ruined the bake.
Notes:
I didn’t think it was that bad.
It was pretty bad though.
I denied how bad it was for a fair amount of time.
Rate the Bake
Every week my wife rates the bake on a scale of 1 to 10.
1 - “I wouldn’t even put the birds through this”
5 - “Toast, maybe”
10 - “Pass me my sweat pants”
Twice-Baked Banana Bread: 0.0/10
— “It’s disgusting. You might as well throw it away. You’re not going to be able to fix this one. Oh my God, it’s stuck in my teeth.
[5 minutes later]
I feel sick. I think I’m going to get the runs.”
My son, on the other hand, loved it. He has been the pickiest eater for weeks now, and we haven’t been able to get him to even taste most food. Yet, he scoffed up slice after slice. I also kinda liked it, but only if I convinced myself it was something else.
Pairs nicely with a completely different banana bread recipe, provided you don’t eat this one.
It shouldn’t last long…because you should have chucked it. Don’t give it to the birds; not even I hate them that much.
What’s nice about this verdict is you can trust it. My wife ain’t afraid to speak her mind. Once, after making a particularly bad batch of banana bread, she sweetly reassured me during my time of need: “It’s disgusting. You might as well throw it away. You’re not going to be able to fix this one. Oh my God, it’s stuck in my teeth. [5 minutes later] I feel sick. I think I’m going to get the runs”.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What’s the Deal?
If you have a recipe that can make it passed my wife’s scathing verdicts, please send it through. She loves bread and I am always looking to win flavour (see what I did there). Just click on “Bake my Bread” and send it through with “Bake my Bread” as a subject line. I’ll respond with an estimated date of bakeage.
This is a once a week affair. Every Tuesday—aiming for before lunch—I’ll send the recipe I made over the preceding weekend with proof of life. Sign up to get them straight to your inbox. Or don’t. I don’t care. But your waistline might. On second thought, you really shouldn’t.