Candy Critic Dessert Club – The First Recipe - Banana Bread

Welcome to the first of what we hope to be many installments of the Candy Critic Dessert Club. We hope to regularly post our experiences making various desserts from around the world. In some cases we may be making something we're familiar with, other times we'll make something brand new to us. Often we'll get creative with our desserts either out of necessity or because we're being "creative".  The rules for us are simple; we won't edit out our mistakes. Sometimes desserts won't work, and you'll hear all about it.

For our first recipe we’re going to be making banana bread.  I chose this banana bread recipe because it’s the one I’m known for right now.  When I get invite to a party, people often ask me to make this banana bread.  I’ve made it a million times before, so I’m pretty sure I’ll get it right.  I know that I’m going to mess up a lot of recipes in the future, so I figured that I should try and make Dessert Club entry right.

Here’s the ingredient list:

2-3 very ripe bananas, peeled
76 grams cup melted butter
1 cup of maple syrup, honey, or brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 cup of walnuts
½ cup of chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Melt the butter, and mash the bananas. Once the butter is melted, ad it to the mashed bananas.  Then ad the maple syrup/honey/brown sugar, if you want to be creative you can ad a mix of any one, two, or three of these three sugars.  After everything is all mixed up, ad the egg, vanilla and baking soda. Ad the pinch of salt I always have a problem when a recipe says pinch of salt, how much is that exactly?), and gradually mix in the flour.  Once it’s all mixed together, stir in the chocolate chips and the walnuts.

Put everything into a greased and floured baking pan, and bake for about an hour.  Check on it after about 45 minutes by sticking a toothpick in, if the toothpick comes out clean it’s ready.  If it’s not yet baked, return to the oven for 10 minutes and check again.  Once the toothpick comes out clean, let it cool for about 15 minutes, remove from pan slice and slather it with butter.

This is a seriously tasty and simple recipe.  The biggest difficulty is judging when it’s done.  I’ve often under and over cooked my banana bread but fortunately you have some wiggle room both directions. Slightly under-cooked bread is OK, and slightly over cooked banana bread has a slightly nutty flavour. This time I over cooked the bread a little, but it still worked out pretty well.

I have to admit; this was a pretty boring first attempt at a dessert club.  I’m sure my friends are going to love it because they now have my famous banana bread recipe, but risk wise I didn’t really do much at all.  I think next time I’m going to try something a little more daring.  I’ve never made ice cream before, and I don’t own an ice cream maker, that sounds like an idea.

Do you have a family recipe you'd like to share? Maybe an Internet dessert creation you've discovered. Even if you've heard of some kind of exotic dessert you think we should attempt. Send us a note, link, or scan, because we'd love to try it.

Whenever we try a new dessert recipe we'll post about it on our social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr), just in case you want to try it with us.

CC