Not Having a Kitchen is Making Me Go Bananas

On a whim I decided to go home last night. I was homeworkless, dying to be in a kitchen, and I had a ride, so why not? After pouring over bakerella.com and flipping through websites generated by stumbleupon.com, the "Recipes" folder in my bookmarks tab was being flooded and I needed to give one or two of my latest finds a go.

When I walked in the door 9 bananas were laying on the kitchen counter, all ripened to the point that they were destined for banana bread and nothing else. Just a couple days ago I had come across a recipe for banana bread that involved peanut butter, chocolate chips, and a crumbly topping that made the loaf look more like a coffee cake. The recipe came from a blog called "Oh Baby O," a pretty appropriate name when you take a look at this stuff. It's more like a dessert than a bread, but who's complaining?

Given the number of bananas I had to work with I tripled the recipe (and still managed to work in another batch that I'll show you later...), 2 medium loaves and 20 muffins. I actually made these into muffins purely because I ran out of loaf pans to hold batter, but they were an excellent way to share this awesome recipe with friends back at school :D

Anyway, the recipe is here: http://ohbabyo.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/chocolate-peanut-butter-banana-bread/ But of course, I made some changes... I tripled the recipe but I only used two cups of sugar total, 1 white and 1 light brown. I thought a bit of light brown would lend better to the flavor and give the bread a chewier and denser texture. You can actually cut quite a bit of sugar out of most recipes, sometimes I'm daring enough to take out half and you usually can't tell much of a difference! I also used half whole wheat flour. Because I <3 style="text-align: center;">

As mentioned before, I did make a fourth batch of banana bread, this one much different. I assumed my parents wouldn't be too keen on the peanut butter and chocolate hyped loafs I was planning on cranking out of the oven, so I turned to a tried and true recipe from Smitten Kitchen: http://smittenkitchen.com/2006/11/speckled-for-the-freckled/. Again I used half whole wheat flour just for good measure ;) and my father was more than happy to splash some bourbon in to accompany all of the spices. This makes a really good loaf of banana bread, a little less sweet, but my only complaint is that it tends to fall. It tastes great, but doesn't rise much at all...

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Back on campus now, hopefully my banana bread rendezvous has baking out of my system for a bit. Next week is spring break though! And I'm hoping, of course, to find some time to try out a couple more recipes I have stashed away... we'll see ;)