I make a lot of banana bread, mostly because I buy bananas fairly frequently and then never eat them before they turn black. I then either make banana bread or muffins right away, or freeze the ripened bananas for future baking.
For the past several months, my go-to recipe has been the Martha Stewart Banana Bread recipe. It's really, really good and I generally would not imagine deviating from it. However, recently I had 3 frozen, ripe bananas and 3 black bananas on my countertop, so I decided to take a gamble and try the Cook's Illustrated Ultimate Banana Bread. The Cook's Illustrated recipe calls for 6 bananas, which is generally far more than I ever have.
In classic Cook's Illustrated form, their recipe is more complicated than one's standard banana bread recipe (including the Martha Stewart version) and involves cooking down some banana liquid. Despite the longer process and need for far more cooking instruments, the result is really amazing. Incredibly rich with banana flavor (remember, 6 bananas for one loaf!), a perfect crisp exterior and good consistency within the bread. The presentation of the bread is also much nicer than one usually finds because one banana is sliced and placed on top of the bread before baking (perfect for a brunch potluck).
So, all in all, I am very happy I decided to try the new recipe and will look forward to trying more because it seems like maybe banana bread can only get better and better?
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