Anyone who has a baby around knows that they love bananas. You also know babies can’t finish all the bananas you buy before they go brown, then spotted, and finally black. I think this child based excess of old bananas was the original source for the plethora of banana bread recipes. Regardless, my solution to stem the brown & black banana tide has been to make banana bread.
My original recipe for this comes from Bon Appetit Magazine. It’s called their Best Ever Banana Bread and what makes it best ever is copious amounts of fat and sugar. In our quest for a healthier recipe, I sought out one with much lower fat and sugar. After two false starts I settled on this recipe from Recipe Zaar.

The addition of the apple sauce adds a nice flavor and when I stumbled across granny smith apple sauce snack cups in the store, I decided to give that a try. The granny smith made a huge difference. It really adds an extra dimension to the banana bread, giving it just a little bit of sour tart taste. So, of course, I decided to punch that up with even more.

I ran into a problem when I decided to add two entire snack cups to the mix. This added a lot more fruit material and liquid. I’ve been compensating with an extra 1/2 cup of flour and a pinch more baking soda and baking powder. So far that seems to have corrected and made a better cake, but I think I still need to add more of them to make it the best yet.

I changed my mind on the GSAS (granny smith applesauce). I ran into problems with such a huge mixture. Now I only use extra GSAS to make up for a deficit in the available number of bananas.

I also changed the cooking method to cream the sugar and butter first. This made a fantastic difference in texture but only if the butter is at room temperature. Room temperature butter is very important. The BB is much lighter and fluffier now. I also triple the vanilla. I think everything needs much more vanilla than is in the recipe. I kept adding more and more vanilla until all I could taste was vanilla. This was too much. 1 Tablespoon of vanilla is about the maximum, but you may want less depending on your taste.

Another option, which I haven’t tried, would be to hold back one or two of the bananas, but I think that might change the taste too much. Given the way we go through bananas, I’m baking about one BB a week. So it won’t be long before I decide to try another variation.

If anyone knows of a source of granny smith apple sauce that doesn’t come in snack cups, please let me know by leaving a comment.

In the mean time, here’s the recipe as it stands:

• 4 very ripe bananas
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon + a pinch baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon + a pinch baking powder
• 1 egg
• 2 1 Motts Granny Smith applesauce snack cups

1. Cream softened butter and sugar together in a stand mixer for 5 minutes on medium.
2. Add bananas into the bowl and mash for another 5 minutes on medium or until pulverized.
3. Add all other wet ingredients and mix well.
4. Add sugar, baking soda, baking powder and mix well.
5. Add in flour in 1/2 cup batches until incorporated.
6. Mix until smooth, stopping once or twice to scrape the sides. Do not overmix (You don’t want to make too much gluten which will make your banana bread tough as nails).
7. Pour into a large greased loaf pan (or you can split it in half and use two smaller loaf pans).
8. Pour into two greased 8 inch loaf pans.
9. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 to 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.

The wine was a sweet white from Fiore winery in Maryland. We picked it up at our friends Mike and Nikki’s wedding back last year.

I deviated heavily from the FoodTV recipe and the results were spectacular. Here’s my version of the recipe:

• 4 firm Bartlett pears
• 1 bottle, less 1 wine glass full, Fiore Malvasia Bianca Dolce
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sugar
• 6 peppercorns
• 1 vanilla bean

Unlike all other Poached Pear recipes I’ve seen, I broke down the pears into 1/8 sections. First I peeled and quartered them and removed the core and seeds. Then I cut them across the width to make them all about the same sized chunks.  I’ve always had a problem with the standard recipe because the insides tend to be raw while the outside is falling apart.

I put the pears in a small sauce pan so I could keep the height of the liquid as high as possible. I emptied the bottle of wine in the pan and turned the heat to one notch over medium. I dumped in the remainder of sugar from the coffee service, which is why I don’t know exactly how much went in the pot. To this I added 6 whole black peppercorns and a vanilla bean.

I split the vanilla bean in half and scraped out the insides. I learned to do that from Alton Brown. I don’t work with whole vanilla beans, and while they’re expensive, it made the dish truly awesome. I put the casing and the insides of the bean in the pan and covered until it started to simmer. Then I took the cover off and let it cook just over a simmer. I guess you’d call it a low boil.

After 10 minutes I checked the pears and they weren’t tender enough. I checked them again 5 minutes later and they seemed all right. In hind sight, I would have given them another 5 minutes because some of the pieces weren’t completely tender. This gives me an estimate of 20 minutes.

Once done I removed the pears with a slotted spoon and put them in a tupperware container which I sealed and set aside. I then strained the liquid to remove the vanilla bean and peppercorns and put it back on the heat. I reduced the sauce to a syrup.

As it turned out, the pears had a expressed a lot of liquid while cooling the the tupperware. When I mixed the syrup back in with the pears it got soupy again. So I poured off all the liquid and reduced it again until I was returning a nice thick syrup back to my cooled pears. You might want to wait for the pears to cool and pour their liquid back into the sauce pan before doing the reduction.

We at these as is, with syrup, and over vanilla ice cream and angel food cake. We tried them hot and cool and both were awesome. The potency of the syrup seemed to fade over the course of a week, so I wouldn’t keep them around for more than 3 days. I just can’t eat that much fruit in one sitting.

This recipe is awesome. Don’t skimp on the vanilla bean. It really makes the whole thing worth while.

I plan on trying this again, but I’ll probably double the recipe. It’s a lot of work for just 4 pears and 8 pears worth would be better.