Sarah: ICBC Bananas

Banana Nut Bread

2 1/2 cups sifted flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 stick ( 8 tablespoons) softened unsalted butter

2/3 cups sugar

2 large eggs

3 very ripe bananas

2/3 cup well-shaken buttermilk

1 cup toasted walnuts (put them in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter your loaf pan.

2. Stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in a bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, beat together butter and sugar with a mixer on high until smooth, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to medium, add eggs one at a time, beating till combined. Add bananas and mix till combined (the mixture will look curdled). Reduce speed and add flour mixture in 3 batches alternatively with the buttermilk, starting and ending with flour. Mix until smooth. Add nuts.

4. Put in loaf pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean, 1 to 1 1/4 hours.

---REVIEW---

I've never made an official bread before, so I was really excited to make this, and even more excited when it came out well (I was worried as it is not a high altitude recipe). It even tastes awesome. Take that high altitude.

My first banana recipe was "Baked Banana Chips", which I actually made during the challenge week, but didn't take a picture of because they didn't come out. I didn't bake them for long enough, but feel free to give it a try yourself with this recipe.

Bread recipe from "Gourmet Today".

Carrie: Iron Chef Blogger Challenge Nutmeg

Since Arizona is apparently under siege from wind, rain, potential snow, and the right conditions for a tornado, it seemed like a good night to bake banana bread. And I'm busy the rest of the weekend. This week's challenge was nutmeg, so off to google search I went. For the Love of Cooking is one of my favorite cooking blogs because her recipes are healthy and simple, the perfect recipes for the home cook. I found a recipe for Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips and Walnuts and since I'd been wanting to make banana bread for some crazy odd reason, it made sense that I turned it into my ICBC recipe. My sister and I decided the banana bread is delicious. I'd give you a roommate review too, but the roommate doesn't like fruit, especially bananas. I think I would definitely make this recipe again.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread (adapted from For the Love of Cooking)
1 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 ripe bananas
1 egg
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
chocolate chips
*The recipe also called for toasted walnuts which I don't really care for and ground cloves which I didn't have, but I don't think the bread suffered very much from the missing ingredients.

Grease and flour a loaf pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In one bowl, mix flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. In another bowl, mash bananas, egg, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract and butter and mix thoroughly. Slowly add dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix well. Add chocolate chips to the batter (I just eyed this) and pour the batter into the loaf pan. Bake for 40 minutes or until knife poked into center of loaf comes out clean.