Food Neep: Interesting Fail Cases

[coraa]

Today I made banana bread, using the recipe from Beard on Bread. It was my first time with this recipe (I don't have a favorite banana bread recipe of my own yet, so I'm experimenting), but I goofed it. First, I realized after the batter was made up that I'd used twice as much butter as I was meant to. The instructions said '1/2 stick,' but I read it as '1/2 cup.' (Whoops.) Second, I used a little bit too much banana -- the recipe called for 1 1/2 cups, but I rounded up to the nearest whole banana. (Which probably wasn't more than 1/4 cup more.)

I also used whole toasted hazelnuts instead of chopped almonds (which the recipe recommends) or chopped walnuts (which is what I'm most used to seeing), and I added a candied hazelnut topping, but those were features rather than bugs.

The result is entirely edible, but definitely different. The bread took longer to bake -- between the extra banana and the extra butter it was a very wet batter, so this wasn't surprising. When it came out, presumably because of the longer bake time, the edges had darkened quite a lot and had a chewy, almost caramelized texture. They didn't taste burned, though, and so it was merely interestingly different.

The bread isn't as light as I usually expect, again no doubt because of the very heavy, wet batter. It's quite moist in the center, rich, and, with the candied hazelnut topping, sweet. Really more like a slightly smoky, very hazelnut-y banana cake than banana bread. Still, for a goof-up, an entirely edible result. (And thanks to triath for putting the idea of using whole hazelnuts into my head.)

The candied hazelnut topping is one of my old standbys: chopped nuts, about 1/2 cup; enough water to just moisten the nuts; enough sugar to stick to the water and coat the nuts. The sugar should still be granular, like damp sand -- you don't want so much water that you're pouring sugarwater on your batter. Spread over the top of the batter before you put it in the oven. If you like, sprinkle additional sugar in between the nuts. Dust lightly with cinnamon or nutmeg, if you want, and bake as usual. The sugar will gradually melt, coating the nuts and giving the top of the bread a sweet, crackled crust.

Comments

[triath.livejournal.com]

It makes me salivate just thinking about that hazelnut banana bread that came in my bakery share. Mmmmm...

Another interesting idea that was in this week's share: Rhubarb bread! Who knew? It's in line with banana bread, pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, but with rhubarb. It's soooo good!