Banana Bread Baby!

Oh! I am so excited! For two reasons. One: I have finally figured out how to post pictures on this blog. And, naturally, two, would be that after much perfecting this banana bread is the bomb! It's almost like banana bread brownies.

It is fabulously moist and sticky (which is how I prefer my banana bread) and I think maybe not too bad for you, if you don't eat the entire bread in 24 hours.

Which we did.

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Just have to make this even

But that is neither here nor there, what is here and there is this: this bread has a secret and it just may be the secret to many more mysteries of the baking universe, and here it is: almond flour...shhhhh.

Or almond meal...shhhhh. They may be the same thing. In fact I think they are. I bought a nice big bag of unblanched almond dust at Trader Joes some time back and although, I have been sprinkling it here and there for some time hoping it would unfurl it's secret merits, it just wasn't really happening for us (me and the almonds).

Until now.

I had been tweaking a recipe for banana bread for some time when my super friend Shea called me up to ask me if and how I use almond flour. I said I put a little in some cookies once, and the cookies didn't seem to mind, but that I was no expert in how to use it. After calling me to ask me for advice Shea then proceeded to read the back of the almond flour bag to me over the phone. It said you could safely substitute 50% of the flour in a recipe with almond meal. She said she was going to dredge some fish in it. I wished her godspeed and hung up thinking more intently about almond meal than I ever had before.

And this most delicious cake-bread is the offspring of that long, intense and fortuitous thought.

Pretty Babies

Buttermilk Banana Bread

2 large bananas

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 tsp. baking soda

3/4 cup  dark muscavado sugar (This is available at whole foods and is worth looking for, but you could use regular brown sugar))

6 Tbsp. butter

1 egg

1/2 Tbsp. vanilla

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour

2/3 cup almond flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2/3 cup nuts (pecans, walnuts) toasted, if they are raw

turbinado sugar (granulated would be okay) and more nuts (raw is best) for sprinkling

Pre-heat oven to 375. In small bowl mash bananas and combine with buttermilk. Add baking soda. In large bowl cream butter and sugar. Add one egg. Combine the banana/buttermilk with the butter/sugar. Do not break up any lumps of sugar. Lumps are your friend, as they just might stay together and form a little pocket of sweet delight in the bread. Add vanilla. In any bowl you want combine the flours, baking powder, and salt. Pour all at once into the wet ingredients. Fold together just to combine evenly, but do not over mix. Add pecans or walnuts.

Pour out into a greased 8x8 pan. Sprinkle with turbinado sugar and chopped nuts. like this...

Bake for 20 minutes at 375 and then turn oven down to 350 for 12 minutes more.

Let the bread rest in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning it out. Be careful when turning it out. It will be very fragile because of the almond meal. You can place a plate on top of the pan and invert it onto the plate and then place another plate on top of the inverted cake and flip it over. But you probably already knew that, huh?

Last word of advice, you must eat a good portion of this cake while it is very warm because it is so delicious you will die, and be resuscitated and then eat one more piece.

Piece out!