Banana Walnut Bread: Simple but Yum!

My mom requested I make Banana Bread; she bought Cavendish bananas which were on sale because they were starting to go overripe. I guess she missed the stuff since I went into baking different recipes.

Bananas are pretty stoked if you ask me. Besides being a nice dessert after meals or a snack, it's packed with a unique composition of nutrients while gives us a lot of health benefits. High in potassium and low in salt, it's a perfect way to battle high blood pressure. Bananas contain trypthopan, which helps the body in processing another protein found in bananas called serotonin; these acts as anti-depressants and reduce feelings associated with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and even PMS. Eating bananas helps us re-balance when we're stressed by replenishing your potassium reserves. It also helps you recover when you're experiencing withdrawal from trying to quit smoking. Bananas works as antacid to soothe heartburns and is recommended as a hang-over  cure by making it into a milkshake. 

Before I get to scientific about bananas, just think of this: have you seen an angry monkey if you give him a banana? ;)

Okay, that was lame... haha! Anyway, the bananas mom bought were close to over ripe and spotty, perfect for baking. I decided Banana bread instead of crumble bars since it's the easiest thing to bake. A friend posted on my Facebook wall that my blog is not for beginners. I choked a bit. Flattered in some way, but bothered that I'm being too ambitious with this blog. Ehe, I think she might be right; like my mom is right about me focusing on the basics. So let me rewind myself a bit and present to you the reason that got me hooked to baking; the bread that started it all:

The culprit: Banana Walnut Bread.

BANANA WALNUT BREAD

INGREDIENTS

*makes 1 loaf

3 Cavendish bananas

1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter, room temp

2 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

1/4 cup raisins optional

1/2 tsp cinnamon optional

1/4 tsp nutmeg optional

PROCEDURE

*Preheat oven to 375F. Butter loaf pan.

1. Mash bananas to consistency of baby food. Should make at least 1 cup. Set aside.

2. Soften butter then beat in eggs, vanilla and sugar.

3. Add in flour, salt and baking soda. Mix well until smooth. Mix in mashed banana until well incorporated in the batter.

4. Pour half of the batter into loaf pan. Distribute walnuts and raisins on top to get even amounts of walnuts throughout the loaf. Pour remaining half and spread evenly. Top with more walnuts and raisin if preferred.

5. Bake for 50 minutes. Test if done by piecing the loaf  in the middle with a thin bbq stick, if it comes out clean, it's done. If batter still sticks, bake for another 5-10 minutes. Once done, take out of the oven and completely cool before slicing or removing from loaf pan.

...completely cool before slicing or removing from pan isn't a virtue practiced in our house. As soon as it comes out, someone would sneak past me and help themselves. I was luck enough to get the shot above without any crust pinched-off. But who wouldn't want to have a warm slice of Banana bread then topped with vanilla ice cream or slathering it with more butter?

After it was done, left it on the kitchen counter to cool. Then I took a bath, listened to some Adele. When I got back to remove the bread from the pan, it was already wiped out; and me the baker didn't have a change to taste it. Sigh.

Anyway, if Cavendish seems to be unavailable, local bananas called Lakatan can be a substitute. About 3-4 bananas of this variety will work with this bread, make sure that they're really ripe and don't mind the bruised parts because they're the best. You could also use any baking pan or muffin pan instead of a loaf pan. Add more nuts, less or none. Raisins or no raisins. I even tried mixing finely grated carrots making it a Banana Carrot Walnut Raisin Bread. Now that's a mouthful, but tasted yummy too! ^_^

Banana Cinnamon Filling: Making the best out of a Profiteroles FAIL

Yesterday, I made some adorable looking Profiteroles. Inspired to make them bigger, I decided to make another recipe of Profiteroles today. I got too excited and went on making the recipe of Choux pastry from memory. I had a song in my head and was bobbing my head to it the whole time. Bad idea. 

While piping the second batch of pastry dough onto the baking sheet and waiting for the first one, already in the oven to bake, I felt something was off. I noticed the batter was easier to squeeze out than yesterday's. I decided to check and see if the first batch are done. There was definitely no puffing and the undersides of the pastry was turning brown too fast; it had some sort of foamy bubbles forming around each pastry. PANIC.

What the heck happened? Why is there oil in the pan? Fudge.

Julie Powell was wrong: You CAN have too much butter.

I didn't realize I placed a bar of butter (equivalent to 2 sticks) instead of halving it to put into a recipe of  which resulted to an oily mess in the baking sheet and a flat dense pastry.

Also, I think I have a problem with eggs. In the French Macaron fail, it got whisked too much; I was heavy handed with them. Now with today's Choux, I added 1 too many. I pray I won't have any egg-related disasters anytime soon, my dad already complained about me using up the egg supply in the house.

I told my boyfriend about how I got so pissed at myself for messing up the eggs again and he couldn't resist cracking these lines:

"Don't beat your eggs too much, I mean, yourself too much."

"I know you want it perfect, but you gotta spill some egg, I mean milk to make a good one."

 What a supportive boyfriend I have noh?

Anyway, I had no other choice but to find a way to make them at least palatable. The pastry were dense and had the strong taste of egg and butter. It was crusty on the outside and very dense inside. The crust reminded me of egg tart... hmm... what if.... LIGHTBULB!

I scurried through the kitchen and looked for ingredients. Remembered a cooking show making custard cream by combining milk, sugar and egg yolk. Whatelse? whatelse? Oooh, nice bananas... Wondered if there were any banana filling recipes, so I researched on the net. Too many of them, so I decided to derive from them a pretty basic recipe which I had the ingredients for.

So I made Banana Cinnamon Filling. Originally, I made just a plain banana filling, but it lacked warmth, it was just, well, boring. We only had local bananas, a Cavendish variety would've done a better job. And so I got some cinnamon powder, mixed it in.

Thus the impromptu Banana Cinnamon Filling turned these sorry looking pastries, from this:

Looked like dried up p---... oh, nevermind.

To these (of course, with the help of chocolate Ganache and powdered sugar)...

Pastry sandwich?
Scoop out insides thru the bottom. Fill with filling.
Assemble sandwich. Drizzle with Ganache and dust with powdered sugar.

(Piped these ones into bee-hives.)
Cut off the top. Scoop out the inside.
Fill with filling. Replace top.
Drizzle Ganache and dust with powdered sugar.

My nephew ate one... and another... and another. Mom ate the scooped insides, licked off the spoon I used for the filling. My dad had his mouth full with one as soon as he arrived. Even dogs even liked the burnt ones!

As for me... knowing it's a FAIL made it look less appetizing, because I know how this should taste like if these were puffy and light. I've gotten my dose of humble pie.

Here's the recipe of the filling I made that somewhat saved the day. Be warned it's very simple as I had to make it from scratch.

BANANA CINNAMON FILLING

INGREDIENTS
1 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tbsp of cornstarch 
1 tbsp flour
2 egg yolks
1 ripe banana
1/8 scant tsp fresh kalamansi juice
1/8 tsp vanilla
a pinch of cinnamon powder


PROCEDURE
1. Mash banana in a bowl. Mix in kalamansi juice to prevent the bananas from browning.
2. Sift together cornstarch, flour, sugar and cinnamon.
3. Scald milk in a saucepan. Stir in the sifted dry ingredients until no lumps appear.
4. Beat in egg yolk, one at a time. Continue stirring until thick and smooth. Remove from heat.
5. Pour in mashed banana and vanilla. Mix well. Let cool before using.

Upside: There were still some Ganache left, so I sliced some bananas and apples. Et voila, faux-fondue as consolation. ;)