Banana Pecan Bread and contemplating why good is apparently no longer good enough

This simple Banana Pecan Bread is perfect for baking—and sharing—on a chilly fall weekend. Recipe below.

This bread wasn’t meant to be featured here. We just had some bananas on their way to becoming a science experiment. I’d planned to make my Mango Banana Bread, but balked at spending $1.99 for a mango at the supermarket. At the Mexican produce market in our neighborhood, where we usually find better prices, they’re currently $2.49! So I decided a simple banana bread with pecans would be good. And that got me thinking how good is somehow not good enough these days. Continue reading “Banana Pecan Bread and contemplating why good is apparently no longer good enough” →

The bread of the dog that bit you: Bourbon Pecan Banana Bread

Celebrating the new year with a banana bread that gets a boozy flavor boost with bourbon, pecans and orange zest. Recipe below.

The last day of 2013 began with me in the kitchen at 8:30 in the morning, preheating the oven, preparing to bake. The day being New Year’s Eve, it was somehow appropriate that I would be baking with bourbon.

Our houseguest was still asleep, so instead of the kitchen boombox, I had my iPod going. Somehow appropriate to cooking with bourbon, what was playing on it was The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York, a live album recorded at the Village Vanguard in January 1962. In addition to Cannonball on alto sax and his brother Nat on cornet, it featured the always inventive Yusef Lateef on tenor sax, flute and oboe. Hard bop jazz of the 1950s and ’60s is a sweet spot for me, and this album is particularly sweet. Great music to cook to—especially with bourbon. Continue reading “The bread of the dog that bit you: Bourbon Pecan Banana Bread” →

Easy as, well, Mango Banana Bread

Ripe mango and bananas, chopped walnuts and vanilla create a flavorful, not-too-sweet dessert bread. Substituting canola oil for butter lightens it up. Recipe below.

That’s right. The guy who never bakes has baked again. But a bread like this is so easy that it doesn’t feel like baking. There’s no sifting, no kneading, no waiting for dough to rise (and punching it down and waiting some more). You don’t even need to haul out the mixer for this bread—a wooden spoon will do just fine.

Of course despite the name, Mango Banana Bread is really more of a loaf cake than a bread. And therein lies some of the ease. You’re not producing a temperature-humidity-time-sensitive dough; you’re making a batter. At least for me, batters are much more forgiving. Continue reading “Easy as, well, Mango Banana Bread” →