Basic Banana Bread

My pal Carole asked if anyone had any ideas for banana bread, and it reminded me that I’ve never posted my Banana Bread recipe here! I love banana bread, but banana bread seems pretty basic to me. You can add chocolate chips or nuts, yeah, but the recipe does not deviate all that much. Years ago, I experimented with adding vanilla yogurt, wheat germ, and diced apples. I like a moist bread, and those were OK and didn’t make the bread disgusting or anything, but I wasn’t going to win any recognition from bakers’ unions or New York accident lawyers. Besides, I’ve forgotten how much yogurt I used to add… :S

photo credit: seriouslygood1
Well, anyway, after years of experimenting, the best thing I found to make nice, moist banana bread is to double the amount of bananas the recipe calls for. Here’s my tried-and-true recipe.

Basic Banana Bread
makes one loaf

1/3 cup applesauce*
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs

1 3/4 cup white flour**
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups mashed over-ripe banana
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
optional: 1/2 cup broken nuts or 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Have a loaf pan prepared by thoroughly greasing the inside with margarine or butter.

In a large bowl, mix together your applesauce. sugar, and eggs.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add to your applesauce mixture in portions. In between your dry mix portions, add some of the mashed banana. Beat well after each addition. When everything is combined, add your vanilla extract and optional ingredients and mix quickly.

Pour batter into the loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until done. (You can insert a toothpick in the loaf to test for doneness– if the toothpick comes out clean, the loaf is done).

Allow to cool for 10 minutes or so, then remove from loaf pan and allow to cool thoroughly.

Notes: *You can use shortening or butter or margarine in substitute of the applesauce, but I found applesauce a lot healthier and it makes the bread less greasy. And applesauce adds enough moisture to be a suitable substitute for the shortening.

**Be aware that if you use any wheat flour, it will make your loaf heavier and drier. You will need to adjust your liquids, too.

Enjoy!

Easy Giant Apple Pie

Cool weather is here, hurray! I rarely cook in the summer (except for grilling), but now that autumn is on the way, I am getting the “cooking bug” once again. And right now, apples are everywhere. The kids have been busy picking, peeling, and dicing apples for our freezer. All winter long, I have access to instant-cubed apples that I can easily thaw and throw into a pie or crisp or anything we fancy.

So today I made Easy Giant Apple Pie. If you have peeled and diced apples and ready-made packaged pie crusts, this recipe takes about 15 minutes to throw together– it’s SO easy! And I call it “Giant” because it is a huge pie, baked in a casserole dish. This is nice if you have a lot of kids to feed (like me) or a big crowd, if you love leftover pie, or if you’re skipping the appetite suppressant and just want to bake a big pie.

Technically, this kind of apple pie is called “French” apple pie, because it has no top crust. Rather, it has a crumbly streusel topping. It’s fabulous with coffee or ice cream.

Regarding the spices– add to your own liking. I rarely use measuring utensils (I’m a hands-on kind of cook) so the measurements here are approximate. Also, make sure your pie crusts are room temperature. This makes them more flexible without tearing– you are going to need to pull at the crusts a little to fit them into a rectangular 13×9 casserole dish.

Easy Giant Apple Pie

2 pie crusts
1 13×9 casserole dish

for the pie mix:
10 cups (or so) of pared and diced apples (thawed)
3/4 cup raisins (optional)
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup molasses (optional)
1/4 cup ground flax seed meal (optional)
2 Tablespoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 cup flour

for the topping:
1 stick of butter
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Blend the topping ingredients and mash in the butter until the mix looks gravelly.

Mix up the apples and other ingredients for the pie filling.

Take your pie crusts. Make sure they are room temperature.

Gently unroll one of the crusts and place it into the casserole dish. You want to stretch it a little to make the crust fit up along the sides of the dish.

Unroll the second crust and overlap the first a little. Press the seam together where the two meet. Again, make sure your crust fits up along the inner sides of the dish.

Dump the pie filling in the dish. Sprinkle the topping evenly on top.

Bake in a hot oven at 400 degrees for an hour and twenty minutes. The pie should be bubbling. The baking pie makes the house smell INCREDIBLE.

Doesn’t it look scrumptious?? Yum!

Make Your Own Brown Sugar

In case you haven’t noticed, store-made brown sugar isn’t good for you. No, really– it’s just granulated white sugar with caramel coloring. YUK. I make my own, which has *minimal* nutritious value, but hey– it’s better than that caramel coloring stuff!

With my recipe, you can adjust your sweetener to your own liking, whether you want light brown sugar, or dark brown sugar.

Homemade Brown Sugar

Molasses
White sugar
A very large, tall container
A wooden spoon

Beware, though– this gets a little messy.

Dump the white sugar in the tall container. I recommend a tall one because it’s easier to mix and keep the molasses in the container while stirring. If you use a low, round bowl, you may wind up with your sugar all over the counter. Unless you are a neat-nik. I am not, so…

Once you have the sugar in the container, dump in some molasses. BE SURE to keep the molasses away from the sides of the container, because it will stick to it and you’ll have to stir like the dickens to get it off and mixed into the sugar. I create a small well in the center of the sugar and dump molasses in, a little at a time.

Mix by hand for 4.67 hours.

KIDDING.

But it will feel like it.

Mix and mix and mix, until it is, well, mixed. I usually recruit a few of the kids to take turns. They are usually reluctant, until I promise them I will make them the Bread Machine Apple Donuts, which at the mention of those, they turn into salivating, slathering slaves ready to build the pyramids if I ask them.

When the enslaved minions have mixed your molasses and sugar, cover the container well and place in storage. I don’t know how long the stuff will keep; ours is always used up within a few months.

So now you can rest easy, knowing that you are feeding your family some REAL sweetener for their goodies. I know I feel like a better mother after doing it.

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