Decadent Banana Bread

Right after the disaster with the whole grain brownies, something good DID happen. The very next day, I tried the banana bread recipe again, with a few adjustments based on my parents' suggestions. My dad thought the banana bread before didn't taste much like banana and told me to add more banana next time. My Mom wanted it less sweet. She also gave me a pack of honeyed walnuts from HK, which was great so I didn't have to buy any walnuts. There was still some more of the leftover cheap chocolate from the WW brownies, so I tossed those in as well.


Tita Kulet helped me with the preparations. I used a bunch of overripe bananas (conveniently and cheaply obtained from Marquee Metro supermarket, my favorite supermarket recently. I'll explain why in a future post). I wanted her to mash only 6, but she ended up mashing the whole bunch (about 7, I think), and that frazzled me up a bit 'cause it wasn't part of the plan, but she convinced me to go ahead and use up all of it anyway. What a great suggestion, because I came up with a very moist and banana-ey bread that stayed moist for a whole week!

I was still using the Pillsbury Healthy Baking recipe, except I substituted half AP, half WW flour. Actually, I think 100% WW flour would do nicely since the bananas keep everything very moist.

Here are the tweaks I made:

Used 7 medium bananas instead of 3
Used only 1/2 cup sugar (still sweet due to moist bananas. I may actually get away with less!)
1 tsp of vanilla
almost 1/2 cup of butter (could probably use less - about 1/3 cup next time due to moist and very ripe bananas)
chocolate chips
walnuts
1 tsp vanilla flavor
added cinnamon streusel on top

Baked for 23 mins at 325F (due to using nonstick pans).

Yield: 3 mini loaf pans (5 3/4" x 3" x 2") or (15 x 7.6 x 5.4 cm)\\

Cinnamon streusel recipe from About.com:

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

half of 1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 stick unsalted butter

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

I won't be using this recipe next time. Probably due to the tropical temperature,the butter became too soft and became more like a paste. I also found it too sweet,despite halving the brown sugar. I'm planning to use a more interesting and less sugar-laden oatmeal streusel topping next time.

All in all, Tita Kulet and I declared it the "best Banana Bread Ever!" My Mom even took hers (sans the streusel topping) to the office and her coworkers said it was 'not too sweet.' And, I gave Nyan a piece and she liked it so much I gave my loaf to her. Ahhh, sweet success :)

P.S. I like eating fresh banana bread, but I realized quickly that I can never fall in love with the taste of banana bread! There's just...something...about it that doesn't give me the smiles and fuzzies :( What a pity...