banana bread

I've never been a huge fan of banana bread. I'll certainly eat it if you put a piece in front of me (although I suppose that is true of most food), but I don't often seek it out. Until I found this recipe. In our very humble opinion, it's the best. It also makes a great movie snack. We always bring our own snack pack when we go to the movies, so last night when we went to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (good movie, but understandably not as rich as the book), we packed a thermos of tea and two fat slices of bread to munch. Good thing too because that movie was long and subtitles make me hungry.

I adapted this recipe from my favorite cookbook to date: The Gourmet Cookbook. It's huge, it's yellow, and it makes my heart sing & my mouth water. I have cooked quite a bit from it and haven't come up with a single thing that isn't delicious. The recipe it lists is for a coconut and macadamia nut banana bread. That is good too, but we are fans of the pecan nut so I use them instead.

4B (Becky and Brendan's banana bread)
2 1/4 c flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
1/4 c sugar
1/4 c agave nectar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
zest of 1 lemon
3 frozen bananas, thawed slightly and broken into pieces
3 tbs sour cream
1 c chopped pecans
1 c  flaked coconut

Grease and flour your loaf pan. Preheat oven to 350F/175C
Mix the first three ingredients in a medium bowl. Beat together butter, sugar, and agave. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well between each. Then toss in the vanilla, zest, bananas, and sour cream and give it a good mixing. Add flour mixture until just combined, then stir in nuts and coconut.
Pour into prepared pan, smooth the top, and bake for an hour-ish minutes (take a peek at it starting at 45 mins) until golden brown and a knife inserted into the center comes clean.

Some notes-
1. The original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups sugar (mix of brown and white),  but it is plenty sweet without all that. Agave is great, but honey would also work, as would using 1/2 cup sugar.
2. We store bananas that we don't manage to eat before turning an unappetizing shade of brown in the freezer for exactly this purpose. Just let them soften a bit on the counter while you're getting the rest ready. The nice thing about thawed bananas is that they are really gooey and thus already sort of mashed. Of course, regular bananas would work- just mash those babies up.
3. Sour cream! Such brilliance. Adds a nice twang and keeps things moist. Yogurt would work in a pinch.

Bon appetite!