Banana Quick Bread

I've titled this 'quick bread' in the hope that no-one will notice it's yet another muffin adaptation. But I felt a bit dishonest, so I'm confessing. I promise I'm going to be getting on with some new original things soon.

We had some overripe bananas so I impulsively decided to make banana bread. I'm not very good at acting on impulses, so I'll be honest and tell you it didn't go brilliantly. It wasn't a disaster, but there were definitely some things I would do differently if I made it again. Luckily it was a learning experience, and my Dad will eat anything (anything) made with bananas.

Most of the adaptations were simple. I added banana, and reduced the fat, sugar and moisture to compensate. But the biggest change was that I didn't use any eggs. There were a number of reasons for this. The main one was that my Dad is the main person who likes bananas, and he's also allergic to eggs. So if I'd made an eggy banana bread, it probably wouldn't have got eaten, because the only person who would want to eat it wouldn't be able to. In the past, we've made banana pancakes which replace the egg with banana, and they have always turned out fairly similar to traditional eggy pancakes. So I hoped that the same sort of thing would happen in this case. And it did pretty much work.

• It's a batch with 200g of flour.
• I added 180g of banana, just because that was the amount that two bananas weighed.
• Because of the added bananas (sweetness, structure and moisture), I also reduced the amounts of fat, liquid and sugar. So 60g of butter, instead of what would have been 100g. 160g of milk, instead of what would have been 200g. And 60g of sugar, instead of 100g. I used brown sugar too, because I thought it would suit the kind of sticky and dense banana-bread-ness.

• First mix together the wet ingredients. I started by mashing the bananas in the bowl, then mixing in the milk and melted butter.
• Then mix in the sugar, and then the flour (don't forget the 2tsp baking powder!).
• Then bake in a loaf tin. I used a small tin but it still didn't really fill it up properly, so if you wanted a full-size loaf, I'd double the ingredients.
• Bake at 180C til done - you should be able to tell using the toothpick test as usual.

It was pretty good. It was very banana-y, but I can't really complain about that. The only negative point was that it was extremely moist, to the point of not seeming cooked even once it was. I think the main reason for that is using too much banana. When I made this, I completely ignored my own previous advice to use an equal amount of additional ingredients as you do of butter, sugar and eggs. So in this case, it should have been 100g.

But all in all, it wasn't as bad as it might well have been. And we did use up the bananas, and my Dad did eat it. I just need to work on my ability to be impulsive.