This is what happens when I have too much time on my hands

This recipe creates a really rich, dense banana bread almost like you could buy at a cafeteria. It’s got the perfect texture of commercially available by-the-slice loaves, with a more subtle and refined taste.

I had way to many rotten bananas, so I portioned them out before freezing them into solid chunks of black, over ripened sweetness.

I hit a few glitches along the way, mostly due to my laziness of not wanting to leave the apt and venture into the cold of the night.


I ran out of maple syrup midway, so I subbed in molasses. The nutty thick texture fits in well with the style of cake. I am lactarted, so I used soymilk instead of buttermilk, although I’m sure cream would be an equally luxuriant replacement. I also added some pastry flour (about 200g of the 495g unbleached white flour).. I’m hoping this will give it a little more lightness due to its inclusion of leavening agents. Finally, I ran out of brown sugar so I finished with white. I’m not at the point with my baking to be able to eyeball and guess amounts of ingredients just yet. Thankfully my trusty kitchen scale (a worthwhile $100 investment) didn’t let the different ingredients throw it for a loop. 212g of sugar brown or while or both is still 212g of sugar. Another good reason to measure by weight instead of volume.




As usual, I sifted all the dry ingredients and mixed them well before adding in the wet. The eggs were beaten in with the syrup and molasses. The idea is to mix the batter as little as possible so that it doesn’t develop much gluten and get chewy. Oh, and given the time of year, I thought it ‘festive’ to brighten up the flavour with some freshly ground nutmeg and cinnamon. Fuck ‘festive’, it’s a classic flavour combination, tried tested and true. I also added a little extra salt to bring out the savoriness amongst all these insanely sweet ingredients. And don’t even think about adding nuts or shitty plastic tasting commercial chocolate chips. The banana lends a smooth rich texture and tropical sweetness that would just get buried under melting, oozing chunks of rich dark chocolate or the crisp crunch of earthy walnuts…actually that sounds pretty good.

So fold in the wet, then added the soy milk/vanilla mix. Then fold in the bananas, which I left pretty much whole so you get nice soft chunks in each bite. I forgot about the melted butter, which turned out well cause it reminded me to grease up my pans and then I just folded the remainder in.

A few bananas on the top, and some sugar to get them caramelized while they bake.


Flour 495g
Baking powder ¾ tsp
Baking soda ¾ tsp
Salt 1.5 tsp
Sugar 212g
Butter 195g
Maple syrup 125g
Eggs 3
Over ripe (black) Bananas 315g
Buttermilk 150ml
Vanilla extract 1.5 tsp

350F, one hour.

Done