Advantages of Repurposing

I helped my older brother write a paper this week. It was about Foxp3+CD4+ regulatory T cells, a topic both simultaneously awesome and terrible. Give me a shout if you're ever curious and want to learn about it. Anyways, there's a big take-away from that experience, a message pertaining to procrastination and its dangers, a sharp segue into this post, but a segue nonetheless.

In my world. there are a couple of things that are okay to wait on. Endings to books, not one of them. Overwhelming essay assignments, nope. Ripening bananas, yes! Long sentence soon to follow. Although I do love eating bananas straight out of the peel, and call me picky because I only like bananas that are still slightly green, firm and a little tart, meaning that anything past slightly green and converging on full yellow just won't do, over-ripe bananas are a gold-mine of possibility. Get that? And as I am often too lazy to eat fruit, and since the slightly green stage lasts oh so brief a time, my banana consumption procrastination usually leads me to wait until the bananas on my shelf are near rotting (entirely black) before I take any action. After all, IMHO, black bananas are the only and best bananas for banana bread.

Note though, that I haven't made banana bread in years. My mother usually sends pictures of all the beautiful little loaves she bakes in her kitchen around the holidays, and their glowing perfection usually pushes me to a cave of baking fear and cowering. In fact, for the most part these days, black bananas usually go into the freezer for fruit smoothies. Not this time though, and I'm glad I put aside those fears.

Apparently, there's a trick to keeping banana bread moist, light and full of flavor, that involves removing as

much water from the bananas as possible. According to America's Test Kitchen, if there's too much liquid in the batter, you get a dense banana bread with overly wet texture. Good news is, if you're using frozen black bananas, just defrost them and the water will seep out on its own. In my case, I was using a combination of frozen and "fresh" bananas, and by "fresh" I mean bananas so ripe their skin was entirely black (3 black, 2 frozen). The trick really does work. Look! Moist, light and fluffy textured banana bread.

So to rid myself of the too-much-liquid problem, I microwaved the peeled bananas in a large bowl, slightly covered, for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the bananas had let go of a lot of sticky liquid. I then drained only the liquid into a saucepan and cooked it on low to medium heat until it had reduced down to nearly half its size, and then added it back to the banana mix and mashed this all together. Microwaves cook from the inside out, so you won't destroy the flavor of the bananas, giving you plenty of room in adjusting the liquid to your desired amount (only qualifier being that it be less than the original amount). As a note, if you are using all fresh bananas in this recipe, microwave to lessen the liquid. If, however, you have frozen bananas, you can probably just skip the microwave entirely. Defrost the bananas, pour out whatever liquid comes from that process, and mash it all up. Let's re-purpose some bananas!

Banana Bread
hand-stirred, no beaters allowed

1.5 C mashed black bananas
5 TB Crisco or melted butter
1 C dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 TB lime juice (or acidic)
1/3 C whole milk
2 C all-purpose flour
1 TB cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
walnut pieces, to decorate
granulated sugar, to sprinkle
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a loaf pan.

Peel bananas and place in a microwaveable bowl. Microwave for 3-4 minutes, covered slightly, until bananas have give up their liquid. Pour the liquid (decant or sieve) into a small saucepan and simmer on stove until the syrup is reduced about half, or until it is only about 1/4 cup in volume. Mix back in with the bananas and mash the bananas until smooth, leaving a couple of chunks for funsies. Let cool.

Using a fork, beat the eggs roughly, and add in the lime juice. Stir all that into the banana mixture. Then add the melted fat (butter or Crisco), brown sugar, and 1/3 C milk. Mix together all the wet ingredients.

Prepare the dry ingredients. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Pour this dry mixture onto the wet mixture and fold in with a spatula until all ingredients are evenly incorporated. Make sure not to over mix the dough, which activates the gluten and gives you tough banana bread. Once the flour is evenly incorporated, pour the batter into your loaf pan, shaking to even out the batter. For aesthetic reasons, take your walnut pieces and line the sides of the loaf, pressing the walnuts into the batter on top (you can also use banana slices and put the walnuts into the batter, but I like my banana bread without too many interruptions). Only on the sides though! If you place walnuts along the mid-line of the loaf, you might impede the rising of the batter in the middles. Sprinkle granulated sugar over the top of the batter and nuts.

Bake at 350 degrees for a little more than 1 hour (around 70 minutes), or until crusty golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.