This Is Starting To Look Better

Banana Bread #3
This recipe comes from Donna Hay's new book 'No Time To Cook'
It is one of four recipes on a page and is just written as a paragraph, rather than all the ingredients listed, followed by a small picture.

The Pictures.

We were into this one before I remembered to take a photo

All looked good inside

The Recipe
1 2/3 C plain flour
1 ½ t baking powder
1/3 C caster sugar
1/3 C brown sugar
1 t cinnamon

Combine the following in a jug
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
½ C vegetable oil
3 mashed bananas

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients
Add the wet ingredients
Mix to combine
Pour into a greased loaf tin 20cm x 10cm x 10cm
Sprinkle with brown sugar
Bake at 160C for 60 mins or until cooked when tested.

The Comments

As you can see from the first photo we were into this before I remembered to take a photo.

It was cooked in 55 minutes so I took it out of the oven earlier than the 60 suggested.

The brown sugar sprinkled on the top gave a lovely crunch.

The batter was very stiff and I wondered if it could do with a half cup of milk or yoghurt.

This is a delicious banana loaf and if my investigations had to stop here I would be pleased with this recipe. However I'm not sure I could stop myself giving it a little tweak, as per the above point.

It was very tasty with and without butter.

It is quite firm, definitely a loaf or a bread in texture.

It was nice toasted but I didn't think this improved anything.

The Score

7 ½ /10

I'm a bit hesitant to give it an eight as there are still a few more to go.

To be 'good', future banana breads will be referenced to this loaf.

Banana Bread #2

This banana bread is from a cook book published by an Australian company that claims to triple test all their recipes in their test kitchens. I'd like to see the results of this recipe - triple tested. This one is not good.

The Pictures

A bit too golden brown for my liking

Nice looking inside, but a very small loaf.

The Recipe

1 ¼ C SR flour
1 t cinnamon
20g butter
½ C firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg, beaten lightly
¼ C milk
½ C mashed banana (1 large ripe banana)

Preheat oven to hot
Grease a 14cm x 21cm loaf tin, line base with baking paper
Sift flour and cinnamon into large bowl, rub in butter
Stir in sugar, egg, milk and banana.
Do not over mix, the batter should be lumpy
Spoon mixture into prepared tin
Bake in a hot oven about 30 minutes or until cooked when tested.
Stand bread 10 minutes before turning onto wire rack to cool.

The Taste Test

This recipe made a small loaf. It burnt very quickly and while the top was past 'golden' the inside was still uncooked. The top of the cake was burnt at the 25 minute mark.
At 30 minutes the loaf was fully cooked but by then the outside was obviously very over cooked.
Inside was very much a bread like texture and tasted much better with butter.
This bread was sweet tasting, but there was no obvious banana taste
When toasted the next morning, and all the burnt crusts removed there there wasn't much to toast but what was toasted, was very nice tasting. A nice spice flavour came through
The results from this recipe were so bad I'd like to have another go at making this loaf. Next time I would do it all in the food processor, double the recipe and add a third banana and of course bake it at a much lower temperature.

The Score 2/10