Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 26th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on my old blog on August 26, 2014.
Banana Bread from Scratch
Let me start off by saying that I have never before, in all my years of blogging, posted a blog about cooking, baking, broiling, frying, or even microwaving anything. Yet here I am, writing a post about how I baked my own banana loaf bread from scratch.
The reason I’m doing this is because earlier this month I wrote a post called “Going Green.” In that post I expressed my antipathy toward overripe bananas. A few commenters suggested that, rather than throwing the overly ripe, brown-spotted bananas into the compost bin, I should consider using them to bake a banana bread loaf.
Their advice reminded me of that old adage about turning lemons into lemonade. And so I thought that turning rotten bananas into banana bread was a good idea. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I am not someone who displays a lot of prowess in the kitchen, but I decided to give it a try nonetheless. I found what appeared to be a simple recipe for banana bread at a site, Inspired Taste. It looked easy enough and I had all of the specified ingredients on hand. I just had to let the bananas ripen well past their prime, like those in the picture below.
I took the three most rotten looking bananas, peeled them, and dumped them into a bowl. I smushed up the three bananas into what the recipe called a “chunky paste.” I added all of the other ingredients noted in the recipe and poured the gooey mixture into the loaf pan.
Then I carefully inserted the filled loaf pan into the preheated oven and cooked the mixture at 350° for around 50 minutes. I pulled it out of the oven and let it cool in the pan for about five minutes before removing the loaf from the pan and putting it on a rack to cool to room temperature.
A few hours later I sliced up a few pieces of the banana bread so I could taste the fruits of my labors. It had a nice flavor to it, but it was dry. There may be several reasons for that. The recipe called for a loaf pan that was 8 1/2 by 4 1/2. From the illustrations on the recipe, the loaf pan also appeared to be metal. I used a glass loaf pan that was actually 9 by 5. So maybe I cooked it too long given the size and material of the loaf pan.
Perhaps tonight I’ll put a slice of my made-from-scratch banana bread into a bowl and top it with a scoop or two of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream ice cream. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
If I try this again, I may go out and pick up a metal 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 loaf pan. Or if not, I may try cooking the loaf for only 40 minutes.
Or maybe I’ll just throw my spotted bananas in the compost bin and walk to the Starbucks a block from where I live and get a tall vanilla latte with a slice of banana bread.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
This, That, and the Other 
I’d go to Starbucks
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I admire your efforts! After all these years of being on this earth, I am so sick of cooking; at this point I do it to stay alive with a fair amount of take-out thrown in. If you want really good banana bread try Pillsbury Quick Breads (banana is one of their best flavors). Anything cooking-related with the word “quick” is for me! 😄
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We do take-out/delivery a lot, too, these days. And when we do cook, quick and easy are the key words.
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Here’s one of my earlier pieces from 2020; it’s the closest I could come to Aug 26
https://theelephantstrunk.org/2020/08/28/hindsight-is-20-20/
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at least you tried it! BTW, I love banana bread!
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Thank you for hosting, Fandango! This is my post from exactly two years ago:
https://mysliceofmexico.ca/2020/08/26/leamington-tomato-capital-of-canada-and-the-mexican-connexion/
And about bananas and bread, I also like them when firm, so when they start developing spots, I use my mom’s recipe, which has a secret for perfectly moist banana bread: add a grated apple to the batter. Here is the recipe, in case you want to give it a try:
https://mysliceofmexico.ca/2020/08/24/banana-bread-a-souvenir-from-nayarit/
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Thanks for the banana bread recipe. I wrote my post in 2014, before yours about apples in the mix to keep it moist. Next time I have a few overripe bananas hanging around, I’ll give your recipe a try.
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😋👍
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That’s how I learned to make banana bread. By the way, turning brown like that doesn’t mean they are rotten. They are too ripe to eat, but they aren’t spoiled. If they were, you also couldn’t make banana bread without getting food poisoning.
The last time, we only had two leftover bananas, so I made raisin-cinnamon-banana bread and I think it was even better. I wish I’d had some nuts to add.
Baking fruit (or fruit & nut) bread isn’t hard. Making regular bread is a bit more complicated, but fruit breads are easy as long as you have an oven that keeps an even temperature.
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Ah, adding raisins and cinnamon. An excellent idea.
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Crushed almonds or walnuts too, if you have them “in stock.” We have a LOT Of stuff “in stock” from all the baking we did during lockdown. I actually think I have enough stuff to bake pretty much anything — except I don’t because (sigh) calories and fat and sugar. Sigh. But the fruit breads are not bad and they don’t have a lot of sugar or fat in them.
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Good job for giving it a try
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Yummy! I love to bake banana bread!
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Now you have made me hungry for banana bread!
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