Banana Bread

I am so excited - my first banana loaf is in the oven. I had my first banana bread when I was in Vancouver, Canada and LouAnn told me about her childhood, when her Mom used to make it. For years I haven't thought of it, but a couple of weeks back I had a slice at my local coffee shop and found a recipe in my latest 'Cook yourself thin - quick and easy'* book. So, I gave it a try - I am really curious how it turns out, as I adapted the recipe and used only half amount of sugar added some spices and was unfortunate enough to not have enough very ripe bananas, so I needed to add some semi-riped ones, so I expect some banana chunks in it.

Let's see....

Love it! It's so fluffy, nutty and yummie....

So here is what I did:

Beat 2 eggs with around 100 g (or 1/3 cup) of light brown sugar a food processor (it needs to get creamy and fluffy), add 50 g very soft butter, (keep beating the mixture), add 200 g flour (or 2 cups), 1 tsp. baking powder, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp. of German Christmas spices (Lebkuchengewürz)**, 1 good handful of slightly crushed walnuts, and 2 very ripe and 2 not so ripe mashed bananas. Put it in the oven at 180 °C for an hour (maybe a couple of minutes more).

A word of advise, as I don't like my cake too sweet so I nearly cut the amount of sugar in half, the original amount is 175 g brown sugar.

And now I will eat it. Ok, I will ask my better half to make some cappuccino first ;o).

And here the version for my lovely family in German:

2 Eier mit 100 g braunem Zucker schaumig schlagen, 50 g weiche (oder geschmolzene) Butter unterrühren, 200 g Mehl hinzufügen, 1 Tl Backpuler, 1/2 Tl Zimt oder Lebkuchengewürz und eine gute handvoll grob gehackte Walnüsse einrühren, 2 sehr reife und 2 weniger reife Bananen zermatschen und das ganze gut verrühren. Bei ca. 180 °C eine gute Stunde backen.

Footnotes:

*Cook yourself thin was an entertaining series from Channel4 in the UK that lastet only 1 round. However, I got both books (yeah - interesting how this always works ;o)...) and already adapted and tried some of the recipes from them and found them very tasty.

**Lebkuchengewürz: is a mixture of different spices. I found this recipe on the German Wikipedia: 35 g Cinnamon, 9 g cloves, 2 g Piment, 2 g Koriander, 2 g Ginger, 1 g Kardamon, 1 g nutmeg (or macis). Grind everything to powder and mix it. I also have a white mousse a chocolate recipe for Christmas that includes a bit of this mixture - I might do it around Christmas again ;o).