Ultimate Banana Bread Family

One of my souvenirs from racing Montreal 24hr Relay on Labour Day Weekend was 14 bananas. You see, my team took advantage of the case special and bought 40lb of bananas to share among 20 skaters. That works out to 2lb of bananas per person to consume within 24 hours. When was the last time you ate this many bananas in one go?! As can be expected, leftovers were aplenty and so 14 of them came home with me enduring 5 hours of driving from Montreal to Toronto. I’m pretty sure I could have taken more and nobody would complain.

One small problem was that they all ripened at the same time. Instead of a steady supply of yellow bananas for a week’s worth of breakfast, I had a whole fruit bowl of spotty bananas begging to be turned into some kind of baked goods. Last month, America’s Test Kitchen Feed hosted a contest for baking their Ultimate Banana Bread. I bookmarked the 6-bananas recipe (!!) but never got around to entering the contest. It was exactly the recipe I needed for my banana surplus situation.

I gleefully made double batch of the recipe. With every spotty banana that I peeled, I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment that good food had not gone to waste. A rather interesting technique that set this banana bread apart is cooking the bananas in microwave to extract a lot of the moisture. The banana “juice” would then be reduced until syrupy. This is a common strategy I notice in many recipes coming out of America’s Test Kitchen. It effectively packs in more flavour without the excess moisture that comes with extra ingredients.

I divided the batter into one regular size loaf and three mini loaves. The regular size was made exactly according to the published recipe down to the scalloped banana edge garnish and caramelized sugar topping. The banana bread delivered on its promise of moist texture and superbly intense banana flavour. I especially adore the glossy dark brown finish. As for the mini loaves, I had a bit of fun. Two of them I folded in handfuls of dark chocolate chips, always a crowd pleaser. The remaining one I layered dollops of natural peanut butter with the batter and then swirled into marble pattern. The combination of banana and peanut butter is a homage to Elvis Presley’s favourite sandwich. What amused me the most though was the girth of that particular loaf. It deserves the name The Elvis Special both inside and out. Why did I not think about swirling in peanut butter to my banana bread earlier? The richness of natural peanut butter is such a perfect match with banana bread. The long baking time also rendered the peanut butter from liquidy to a little cakey. Of the three variations, it was by far my favourite.