If you follow me on Instagram you probably know the ending to this story.
On a fine dandy day, I decided to make banana bread because I was craving for one. Can't deny though I'm a sucker for Starbuck's banana bread and almond croissant ***chef's kisses***. I was being ambitious and told myself "Hey, if Starbucks can do it so can I. Now get those ingredients girl!" I even one upped myself by deciding to make cream cheese banana bread because I believed I can. Oh, and I topped it with almonds because I am fan-ceeee.
I looked for recipes online and cherry picked the one/s that I liked. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out well for me - it tasted good, but the consistency and final look fell short.
Don't be discouraged if the end result doesn't turn out as you expected since baking takes trial and error. No recipe for this blog guys and gals, sorry. I will provide a recipe when I figure out the correct ratios for my pan and oven. For now, here are a couple reasons why your banana bread may look different from the recipe you followed:
Measurements of the ingredients do not match your loaf pan. I forgot to check the website's pan size to see if have something similar. Different pans have different ingredient ratios so make sure to check on that.
Oven sizes. Mine is definitely way smaller since I have Cuisinart oven. This is functional and a space saver but I will need to account for my oven when baking in the future. The heat source is closer to the pan for smaller sized ovens so you can either adjust the temperature, duration, or cover your pan with a tin foil (recommend) so that the top doesn't burn and heat is even throughout your pan.
The size of your 'nana. Yep, size matters in this case folks because of the banana to flour ratio. The websites that I looked into said to have 2-3 bananas for a 1 1/4 flour. However, I think I got bigger bananas for that amount of flour. This one is a bit tricky not gonna lie.
Over-mixed batter. Guilty! I was so excited to make my very first banana bread that I didn't know over-mixing is a thing. I mixed the living hell out of it and I got a wet loaf in the middle as an end result :( . I think there are websites that say mix dry to wet ingredients in that order. Take a mental note of that and see if it makes a difference.
Lastly, setting your oven to toast than bake (yeah, I did that). I think I did a solid 55 minutes of toast (foil on top) before realizing what was wrong. I then tried to salvage it by putting it back again for 30 minutes on bake.
The end result was a toasty, dense, gummy, and surprisingly tasty banana bread.
What I will change next time:
Measure the mashed banana in cups instead of the number of bananas for accuracy.
Cover my loaf pan with a foil for the entire cooking time and remove it only to toast for a minute since my oven is small.
Dial down my temperature from 350 to maybe 300 only. Or maybe not, hmmm still torn on this one.
Maybe check my oven settings next time? :)
Try making your first ever banana bread and let me know how it turns out. Feel free to share any tips and tricks down below. Til' next time!
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Toodaloo,
ITM.