Banana Bread

Banana Bread is one of the many cakes that I had always wanted to bake. Same goes for my Mom. Whenever I mentioned that to her she was like: 'Oh yeah....Banana Bread. We kept saying that we wanna bake it, but we just didn't.'. Well not anymore. Hehehe! I finally baked it. THE BANANA BREAD! ^.^V

In Singapore, we have many species of bananas. Hence, I was unsure which bananas to get. For this recipe, adapted from the book Flour by Joanne Chang, I had decided on Cavendish bananas as I recall only seeing them sitting on the shelf in London without their relatives - other species of bananas that is. And subsequently, I guessed it might be the case in the US too. So, I presumed, the recipes calls for Cavendish bananas.

As we are not used to having bananas hanging around in our house all the time, I had to buy bananas just for this purpose - to bake a cake out of it. I bought a bunch of ripe bananas a day before my 'Baking Banana Bread Day' and placed it in a warm area hoping that it would ripen even more. The next day, as expected, they ripened 'more', but it is still not quite there yet. Banana is one of my favorite fruit (ermm almost all fruits are my best friend) and I want the Banana Bread to be filled with its fragrance. Hence, I was hoping to get the banana to be in its optimum ripeness where it is kinda soft to touch with its skin on and there will be an obvious banana fragrance floating in the air when you walk pass it. My hope was dashed when it didn't turn out that way. I didn't give up, neither did I wait. I continued with the plan and baked it. Even so, this Banana Bread is so yummy that my friends can't get enough of it. During a meet up, I gave my friends one banana cupcake each (I made extras batter and baked them in cupcake cases instead of a loaf tin) and they couldn't resist but to try it even though we were just less than 5 mins away from the restaurant that we were heading for dinner. Knowing that I have more cupcakes in my bag, they asked for more after dinner. I guess they really like it =x 

I wouldn't post her recipe here but if you search online, you can actually find it featured in foodnetwork.com. To save you time from searching, here is the link.

Well, looking at the ratings and reviews via the link, I guess I need not go further praising how well and yummy the Banana Bread turned out to be. Moist, dense, fragrant, what more can you ask for. Not only that, it is quite an easy piece of recipe to try out too! However, my only regrets is that I had not used bananas that were really really really ripe. There is a light banana fragrance but I would like it to be stronger. On the other hand, you can easily alter the recipe with many variations to work on. Such as adding honey or chocolate chips or even substituting banana with pumpkin or apple. Give it a try and tell me how it goes :) I am sure you wouldn't regret trying this recipe and wouldn't thank me enough for sharing it with you. =x kekeke...enjoy~~~

xx,

TBG