Banana Bread

This banana bread was some of the best bread I've ever tasted. I substituted Banana Cream Pie flavored yogurt for the plain yogurt and used half the amount of walnuts and added raisins.


The Best Banana Bread
(from America's Test Kitchen)

Greasing and flouring only the bottom of a regular loaf pan causes the bread to cling to the sides and rise higher. If using a nonstick loaf pan, on which the sides are very slick, grease and flour sides as well as the bottom.Makes one 9-inch loaf

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups toasted walnuts, chopped coarse (about 1 cup)
3 very ripe, soft, darkly speckled large bananas, mashed well (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Adjust oven rack to lower middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom only of regular loaf pan, or grease and flour bottom and sides of nonstick 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan; set aside. Combine first five ingredients together in large bowl; set aside.

2. Mix mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter, and vanilla with wooden spoon in medium bowl. Lightly fold banana mixture into dry ingredients with rubber spatula until just combined and batter looks thick and chunky. Scrape batter into prepared loaf pan; bake until loaf is golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool in pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Oh, Butrfly, that sounds wonderful. Unfortunately, I have everything but the yogurt and I have to make the breads tonight since I'll be bottling tomatoes for a week starting tomorrow. Do you think I could get away with leaving out the yogurt?

You can, just increase the moisture a bit by adding another dairy ingredient (milk, buttermilk, sour cream, etc.).

According to ATK, the yogurt plays an integral role in the recipe for taste and moistness and I believe it after tasting the difference. I think you can get away with not using it though.

Also, one of the key tips is to mix and stir as little as possible just to get the ingredients incorporated, not blended.

Wonderful. Thanks so much Butrfly. I'm going to go throw that together now and I'll let you know how it turns out :-D

The girl is in the oven and now we just wait. I'll tell ya Butrfly, the batter tastes wonderful and I did the raisin thing too since I love raisins.

:::grin::: Let me know when it's done. I'll reach through the monitor and snatch a few crumbs to give it a taste.


Canning tomatoes, eh? Home grown?

I spent all summer nursing a patio tomato variety on my balcony but was disappointed. They never really got ripe, just sort of an greenish orange and then nothing. I may have to try growing them in the bedroom window next year. The balcony only gets a few hours of direct morning sun while the bedroom window gets afternoon sun for about 6 hours.

Doing anything special with the brine for the canning?

Sure thing. I'll even take a picture of it and throw it in my gallery :-)

Yes, I can my own home grown tomatoes. I'm quite sure that the problems tou had with your tomatoes is lack of sun. Tomatoes need lots of sunlight and should get at least 8 hours of sun a day. We have a short season here, so sometimes I have problems with them ripening in time even when they're out in the open and get the full day of sunlight. One good thing about tomatoes though is that they'll ripen after being picked, so I end up taking many inside every year to finish ripening before bottling them.

Canning tomatoes is very easy once you get the hang of it. You first have to sterilize everything you will be using including the bottles. After I get all the tomatoes prepared I just add a tablespoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice in each pint bottle before I add the tomatoes, then seal them and boil the bottles.

Cool! I've been wanting to get a peep at what the private galleries look like.

Cool! Send some virtual homegrown tomatoes to me Next time you do banana breads, this is the recipe I developed, not too far off from Butrflynet's really:

2 ripe bananas
1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
7 oz. flour
6 oz. sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
5 oz. soft butter
1 cup toasted walnut pieces

Puree bananas and sour cream until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, then vanilla. Mix together dry ingredients. Mix in butter and half of wet mixture. Add remaining wet mixture in two batches. Fold in walnuts. Bake in an 8-cup loaf pan for 50-60 minutes at 350 until well browned and a cake tester comes out clean.

Chef's tips: The mixture only gets tough after the flour goes in, so no problem mixing the banana/sour cream mix in the food processor. Have the butter soft, and pinch it into the dry ingredients with your fingers, then add the half mixture of the wet, with a light hand, as Butrflynet suggested, and follow the recipe. Other than that, just have fun!

Butrfly your recipe was a huge hit. It was so moist and it just melted in my mouth. Absolutely fabulous. Thanks a million. Here are the pics I took of the wonderful creation :-D

http://www.able2know.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=28

Cav
That recipe sounds awesome as well. I'll be doing that one next time for sure. I love putting sour cream or yogurt in bread recipes because it makes all the difference in the world. Thanks Cav :-D

Butrfly
You can view the private galleries anytime as long as the owner gives access to it.

Wow, you must have a fabulous garden, more like a farm! Great pictures too! Those strawberries look juicy. For a short growing season, you're sure exploiting the best from it.

Next photo shoot assignment is your garden!

Nice looking gallery too. Are you able to designate the order the photos are displayed or is it in the order they are uploaded? And, are you able to choose various page formatting such as background colors and the like?

By the way, looking at the volume of strawberries on your counter, I now understand why you said you'd be canning all next week. Will you be having your own Mardi Gras celebration after the harvest?

Awwww, gee thanks. I do have a garden album in there. If you go to the gallery and go to private albums, you'll see that I have 3 albums there. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pics of my garden this year, but there are lots of pics from my garden last year and the only difference is that my gardem this year is bigger by 16ft.

You can change the order of the pics in the gallery which I intend to do when I'm finished uploading pics and have the time. Right now I'm just getting them in there in the order I come across them, so it will be a bit unorganized for awhile. There are no choices is background color or anything like that. What you see is all that's available.

Right now I have 3 albums

#1. Home Sweet Home
#2. Montana'a Garden
#3. Montana's kitchen

Here's my garden album.


http://www.able2know.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=27

And this is my Home Sweet Home album.


http://www.able2know.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=26

I'm not even close to done uploading my pics, so there'll be some new ones in there every day.

I know it's just a regional term, but I'm enjoying the thought of Montana forcing a tomato through the neck of what I would call a bottle.

LOL Roger. I do crush them first, so no worries ;-)

I know what you said just went way over my head, but I'm afraid to ask, haha!