Friday, January 1, 2010

Banana Bread

Once again following Bittman, I was able to make a decent Banana Bread. In the process, I bought a hand mixer, whisk, vanilla and all-purpose flour, thus beefing up my kitchen tools.

Things I learned this time:

  • Mashing up butter is nearly impossible, so I don't know if you're supposed to do this, but I melted it in the microwave before mixing it with the eggs and bananas.
  • Mashing up bananas works well with a fork in a small bowl before adding them to the eggs and butter.
  • I'd wonder if I could do this without so much butter. I used a whole stick in the batter and some to grease up the pan and the TJ's Beer Bread trick of drizzling some on the top before baking.
  • Hand mixers are quite strong even at the lowest setting and therefore probably require the use of a big bowl in order to not make a mess. Also, need a place to set it down when not using it without making too much of a mess.
  • When baking and you decide you need another five minutes in the oven, do not just add five minutes to the timer and start it. Thus I ended up setting the timer for 50 minutes instead of 5 and burnt it a bit. Not the worst thing in the world.
  • Using 50% whole wheat flour and 50% all-purpose flour worked fine.

1 comment:

  1. omg you're hilarious. i didn't realize you never cook because i don't either!!! i only bake! i found your blog off of maureen's blog! at least you bought your own hand mixer though, because i only got one as a gift this christmas!

    i mash butter by pressing it through the prongs of a very strong fork. don't melt it. melting it changes its properties. breads and cakes should have unmelted butter because you want the butter to suspend in the batter a little more, not spread out as a greasy mess...

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