TW has recently discovered that he doesn’t hate bananas. So we’ve been playing with banana desserts. So far we’ve smoked and pureed them with some cream or creme fraiche, and made banana caramel, and served them with blueberry sorbet and black sesame cake. And we’ve made banana bread.

At some point I’ll try to post the pictures of the blueberry / banana / black sesame dessert, because it’s really great, but this is about banana bread. It’s about eggless banana bread.

No, we have not started dieting on you. It’s just that we had no eggs in the fridge when I decided to make it, and it had already been a day when several plans fell through and another failure would not have done me any good at all. So I forged ahead and went online. The result was so good that I don’t think I’ll ever make an egg-ful banana bread again.

Here’s the base recipe:

• 1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• a good pinch of salt

Whisk all of these together, and toss  1/2 cup toasted chopped walnuts.

Add the mixture of:

• 1 cup mashed ripe banana
• 1/2 cup buttermilk, or plain yogurt with milk
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Pour into a loaf pan (nonstick, or buttered, or lined with parchment, etc.) and bake until done at 350F.
Be prepared to add more yogurt / buttermilk - the amount you need will depend on the whole wheat flour you use, as some of them will absorb more liquid than others. (And if you use white flour, cut the yogurt to 1/3 cup.) The batter shouldn’t be too stiff. I’m aware this is not a precise description, but if you look at it and think “Hmm, I wonder if I should add more yogurt” - go ahead and add more yogurt. This is very forgiving stuff.

The fun begins if you have creme fraiche. Use it instead of buttermilk and oil. You’ll probably need at least 2/3 cups of creme fraiche - since it has more fat and less water - and possibly as much as a cup. The results are lovely - tender and flavorful and because of all that fat it keeps well.

Incidentally, there’s no reason to buy creme fraiche - the Vermont Butter and Cheese company stuff is very good, but tremendously overpriced. Instead, next time you buy cream and don’t use it up you can make your own, instead of letting the cream linger and die in your fridge. We’ve started doing it as a matter of course. Warm up the cream to 110-115F, stir in a spoonful of plain yogurt (with live cultures, of course!), cover and let sit on your counter for 24 hours, then tuck in the fridge, where it will continue to thicken. Voila - creme fraiche! You just prolonged the shelf life of your cream, AND you can now make the luxury version of eggless banana bread.

Try it with smoked bananas.

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"Banana bread" was written on 07 Mar 2009 and filed in General, Techniques / Recipes