it feels like every time i bake, i learn something new that i can mess up… that i didn’t realize i could mess up before. for example, smitten kitchen’s jacked up banana bread. i have made many a banana bread in my day, but typically the same recipe. i decided to venture out and try a new one. enter, the jacked up banana bread.
when baking, i know to bring all my ingredients from the fridge to room temp (unless of course it’s a baking recipe where everything needs to be COLD, but usually when i bake, things need to come to room temp). so, before my walk yesterday morning, i grabbed the egg and measured out the salted butter and left them on the counter to come to room temp, so when i returned i could bake banana bread!
one thing led to another (work…) and i didn’t get to baking the banana bread til after work. well, the butter is meant to be MELTED, but i figured it was fiiiine because it was so malleable by being left out all day that it would do its melting in the oven. right? well, no. wrong.
back to the recipe. the very first step involves mixing the smashed bananas (nailed it) with melted butter (didn’t nail it). but i did mix them together and what resulted was, well… this:
what i discovered (i think…) is that melting the butter serves a purpose other than tasting really yummy. and that is, it enables the banana itself to cook and become firm to match the texture of the rest of the bread. i realized this because i had to cook the banana bread for nearly 1 hour 20 minutes instead of the suggested 50 min – 1 hour cook time. and the tester never came out completely clean. i eventually just said, fuck it, and let it cool. there was still some banana-y texture, but overall the taste was overwhelmingly GOOD. and i will certainly be having that banana bread for breakfast today.
so friends. i learned to use melted butter when a recipe calls for it because it helps stuff cook that may not otherwise cook in the way you want it to! a valuable lesson that did not end with an inedible dish, but an otherwise delicious dish (save for the perfect texture)! banana bread ftw!
cooking with leeks 