Template

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Banana Bread and Clean Freezers

I have this really annoying habit.
I got it from my mother, it's stuck with me, and I'll probably pass it on to my daughter.

My husband absolutely can't stand it.  I just can't help myself, though.

What is this horrible offense?
Well...I just can't throw away a banana.

As they reach that brown speckled stage where most people would throw them away, I throw them in the freezer.

Perfect for banana bread later!  Why waste their sweet ripeness?

 But then...well, then the problem escalates...have you ever been attacked by a flying rock-hard frozen banana?  An ugly, brown, tropical, projectile?

Yeah well...neither had my husband before he married me :-)

Eventually, opening a very full freezer can become a bit of a contact sport if I procrastinate and continue adding to my banana collection.  Yep.  I'm most definitely a procrastinator.

Of course, when I finally deal with the issue I wind up with wonderfully sweet and delicious banana bread as the payoff!

I was approaching the point recently that absolutely required me to bake with bananas when I stumbled across a wonderful recipe from The Banana Chef that allowed me to kill two birds with one stone. 


This banana zucchini bread is perfect for tackling both my banana and zucchini issues and my freezer is grateful for the space I cleared out.  I've never quite understood zucchini bread...I've made it plenty of times, but it's kind of magical.  That weird green squash becomes such tasty bread!  The only changes I made when baking this are replacing half of the oil with applesauce and using regular sugar rather than caster sugar.  Oh, I also added a little nutmeg.  Turned out very well!  I baked them in a muffin tin and sent them to work with my husband for his co-workers.

I would definitely recommend trying this one out!  I'm including the recipe at the bottom, or you can check out the site where I found it here.

Banana Zucchini Bread Recipe
From The Banana Chef

3 overripe bananas
1 C fresh zucchini, grated
1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1/2 C vegetable oil
3/4 C caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine mashed bananas, oil, egg, vanilla, and mix.

3. Add in sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and mix.

4. Add flour, and mix until just combined.

5. Stir in zucchini.

6. Pour mixture into a greased and floured baking pan.

7. Bake for 1 hour (check for doneness at 50 minutes) or until a wooden pick comes out clean.

8. Allow to cool before removing from pan.

9 comments:

  1. I chop the bananas up first and put them into baggies, it makes it easier, and less dangerous, and also simple to grab a few chunks of banana at random and toss into a smoothie!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a MUCH better way to store them! lol I'm so good about storing just about everything else in a relatively-orderly manner in the freezer, but not so much with bananas :-)

      Delete
  2. How long did you cook this as muffins?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For approximately one hour, but check for doneness at 50 minutes. :-)

      Delete
  3. I made muffins successfully with this recipe baking at 375 F for 30 minutes

    ReplyDelete
  4. OH MY GOD! These muffins were the BEST I've ever had and the best I've ever made! I am not a baker at all (I prefer cooking to baking) but I have been wanting to try a banana zucchini bread, and of course couldn't find my bread pan, so I decided on muffins. These are absolutely the best! Here are the tweaks I made though... I used Whole Wheat Flour instead of white, wuth the sugar I did 1/2 cup of Raw Sugar instead and I folded 3 tbsp of Chia Seeds and 1/4 cup of dark chocolate chip cookies. YUM! Also, they were done in 35 minutes at 375F. I WISH I could add a picture! Really excited for this recipe!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi, I have a few quick questions to help before I start:
    Do you have to defrost the bananas & zucchini? If so how?
    Can the zucchini be chopped or spiralises or does it have to be grated?
    Can you freeze the muffins?

    Thanks in advance x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Becs! Yes, if you are using bananas or zucchini from the freezer rather than fresh you would definitely want to defrost them first- either by just moving them from the freezer to the fridge the night before or even defrosting them in the microwave if you don't have time for that. The zucchini does need to be grated. I don't believe that I've frozen these particular muffins but I've certainly frozen plenty of other muffins/quick breads without any problems so I'm sure that these would freeze just fine too. :-)

      Delete
  6. Be careful with the bake time! Mine were done in 20min at 350*f. I had set the timer for 25min and they should have come out sooner.

    ReplyDelete

Share your thoughts, we want to hear them!