Let’s go Bananas… Banana Bread 🍌🍞
Banana Bread is the epitome of comfort food. When quarantine began in March, I realized quickly how our consumption of bananas went down significantly, leaving behind many ripened bananas. We made good use of these ripe yellow smiley fruit into a warm, sweet, and belly-hugging snack – Banana bread.
The below recipe is an adapted concoction fusing together a chocolate chip zucchini loaf and traditional banana bread recipes to make a unique snack! It features a host of fibrous and nutritious ingredients. What I love about this recipe is that it is so versatile. Many of the ingredients can be substituted really nicely.
This recipe is one that I have shared with many loved ones, the closest, my sister Nuha. For this blog, I decided to invite her to share her perspective on this recipe :) She is easily the funny sibling, I quite enjoy her.
I am grateful to have Fatima in my life as the loving, wise, older sister that she is. Although we live far apart (across the country, in fact), we have always been only a facetime call away. I have always admired my sisters ability to make the yummiest savoury and sweet foods. Being a clumsy kid, mother did not trust me in the kitchen, and so Fatima took on much of the chef’s hat in the family. As her younger sister, I watched her perform in cooking competitions and make the family scrumptious meals, and it is something that inspired me.
When the world got quarantined in March, we all felt despair and grief. Our whole lives altered, along with the fear of an illness affecting ourselves or loved ones, combined with the unknown timeline of how long, are some of the various anxieties we all share during this trying time. With that, some of us benefited from the much needed pause and change of pace, and also the opportunity to pick up a new hobby. For me, learning how to make banana bread with my sister was one of the fun things I did for myself to help me with this time.
When life gives you rotting bananas, you make banana bread! Thus, begins my story of how I fell in love with banana bread.
See, for me I never went out of my way to get banana bread. It was not something I craved, something I asked for, or something I was inclined to make myself. One day, I gazed at the rotten bananas and thought about my sister. That sounds more insulting than sweet, but I mean more so that she takes a situation like rotten bananas and makes it into a delicious bread. Although no one is a stranger to being a rotten banana, myself and sister Fatima included. I digress… I gazed at the bananas and thought “What would Fatima do?” She would make a beautifully ornamented decadent banana bread, so that is what I attempted to do.
And it turned out great! I added walnuts, oats and chocolate to each batch I make and it simply gets better and better. I have tried whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, and even going into specific bread and roll flour. I have tried semi sweet chocolate chips, but the latest bread I made I manually chopped a dairy milk bar and it was deemed superior. I never waver between to walnut or not to walnut, because the answer is always to walnut. The same applies to rolled oats. Of course, it is important to incorporate these accessories into the bread as well as topically. The little chunks and pieces of the chopped walnuts, chocolate, and roasted oats adds just the nice touch of texture to the bread.
The lesson my sister Fatima exhibits in her banana bread recipe, is when when we feel under heat in the oven of this world, we must rise, rise like this delicious banana bread recipe by hers truly.
Go bananas and try this out for yourself.
Ingredients:
3 ripe bananas
2 cups flour
2 beaten eggs
2 tablespoons baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
¼ cup sugar/maple syrup
½ cup melted butter
½ tsp salt
1 grated zucchini
½ cup rolled oats
¼ cup chopped walnuts
¼ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Directions:
1. Preheat your over to 350 F
2. Grease a cake pan/loaf pan well
3. Mash the bananas well and grate the zucchini and set aside.
5. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and stir together.
6. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar well.
7. Add the bananas and zucchini to the bowl of dry ingredients and mix well.
8. Slowly add the creamed butter and sugar mixture to the large mixing bowl of zucchini/banana flour goop and mix well for a minute.
9. Once the butter has incorporated well, and has cooled in the mixture, gently add the eggs, stirring well.
10. Set aside 2 tablespoons of the rolled oats, and add the rest to the main mixture.
11. Fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts
12. To the well greased loaf pan, sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the oats left over around the pan (make sure you keep the remaining 1 tablespoon for the top)
13. Pour the banana bread batter into the loaf pan and shake the pan gently to even out he mixture. The mixture should be thick and unified.
14. Top the batter with the rest of the rolled oats (this will toast and provide a lovely flavor to the bread once baked). You can also sprinkle on top any extra chopped walnuts or other nuts you may want to include.
15. Bake on a middle rack in the oven for 45-50 min or until no batter sticks to a knife when piercing the loaf
16. Serve thick slices, warmed, with some butter for the yummiest results.
Enjoy!