Save your bananas ...

[sirrahbed]

I printed off the recipe and will bake it up later today. I have exactly FOUR very ripe bananas ready to thaw out. OH! When my bananas are super ripe, I put them in the freezer for a couple days, peel and all. Thawed for a few minutes and they are ready for mashing. Yes the look knarley but they are just right for baking. I do this to increase the chances that I will actually bake the bread - you know how ripe bananas ready for bread will end up in the trash?

I will share it with Chris and Misha tomorrow. Maybe I can time it so sirrahned will smell it baking when he gets home from work.

Fun idea to remember your uncle in this way Karen.

[Karen]

I printed off the recipe and will bake it up later today. I have exactly FOUR very ripe bananas ready to thaw out. OH! When my bananas are super ripe, I put them in the freezer for a couple days, peel and all. Thawed for a few minutes and they are ready for mashing. Yes the look knarley but they are just right for baking. I do this to increase the chances that I will actually bake the bread - you know how ripe bananas ready for bread will end up in the trash?

I will share it with Chris and Misha tomorrow. Maybe I can time it so sirrahned will smell it baking when he gets home from work.

Fun idea to remember your uncle in this way Karen.

I always feel AWFUL if I only had two bananas and they were all speckly and ready for banana bread ... throwing them out felt like a crime! What a great solution! (If ever I become NOT allergic to bananas, I'll remember that!)

[caseysmom]

I didn't have baking soda so I used baking powder, the bread was really moist...actually too moist so I am not sure if that is why, I baked it for 1 hour and at least 20 minutes.

It was very good though

[Karen]

Hmm, never made that substitution - I know baking powder contains baking soda plus other stuff, but glad it came out tasty anyway!

[Karen]

Okay, found this:

How much baking powder do I have to substitute for baking soda?
Baking soda is four times as strong as baking powder — so if your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would need four teaspoons of baking powder to produce the same amount of lift. Unfortunately, though, it’s not that simple.


Baking powder is made of baking soda and exactly the right amount of acid to react with the soda (it also includes corn starch to keep the ingredients from prematurely reacting in the privacy of their container). So if your recipe already has acidic ingredients that were going to neutralize the baking soda called for, you are adding other ingredients that may not sit well with them.

Substituting for a lack of baking powder is very easy: 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar (ignoring the cornstarch) for each teaspoon of baking powder required.

We’ve looked in dozens of books to be sure, but no one provides information for the reverse procedure — substituting baking powder when you don’t have soda on hand. To do so, you would have to consider the acidic ingredients in the recipe, and perhaps reengineer the recipe to replace them with more neutral ingredients (using whole milk instead of buttermilk, perhaps). But at that point, you would see, it would be easier and probably a lot more successful to pick up a box of baking soda.

So you're fortunate it worked, apparently!

[Logan]

I love your Uncle Mac's Banana Bread recipe, Karen, and it is filed in my "favorite" recipes. My family LOVES banana bread and yours is always the recipe that I use.

If i can get myself and Lilly well, then I will bake a loaf in your Uncle Mac's memory, too!

Logan

[sirrahbed]

My loaf turned out wonderfully!! It is dense enough to cut well and still very moist - lots of banana flavor, too. I will make it again.

As for Uncle Mac - well I think I would have liked him very much.
...his name was Ovide McCarthy, he was a friend to animals, fixers of engines and all things mechanical, and beloved of children!...

[Karen]

My loaf turned out wonderfully!! It is dense enough to cut well and still very moist - lots of banana flavor, too. I will make it again.

As for Uncle Mac - well I think I would have liked him very much.
...his name was Ovide McCarthy, he was a friend to animals, fixers of engines and all things mechanical, and beloved of children!...

Oh, good! Enjoy the banana bread, yup - it's more banana-y than any other recipe I've ever had!

I think everyone here would have loved him! Maybe I am a bit biased ...