Banana-Banana Bread Using the KitchenAid Scrape-a-Bowl

I received my Scrape-a-Bowl blade on Wednesday evening (3 days ago) and so far I have only made banana-banana cake and soft gingerbread dough (another post). I didn't think it creamed the butter and sugar as well as I would have liked for the gingerbread. It may have been that the recipe called for granular sugar. I normally use castor sugar for my recipes as the smaller particles aerated the mixture much better. I didn't have any problems with the banana bread.

Banana-Banana Bread adapted from Shelley Albeluhn's recipe on Allrecipes.com.

I'm sure it's called banana-banana because it has loads of wonderful banana flavour. This is the best banana bread recipe you can find. It is moist and delicious and soooo... adaptable. I throw in whatever I have on hand in the pantry that will go with it. You can use more or less bananas. I have used between 5 and 7 at different times and the result is still perfect every time. If you don't have enough banana, use apple sauce to make up the volume. You can add any type of nuts, spices and fruit - fresh or dry. This time I have added walnuts, unsalted cashews, almonds, dried cherries and a multitude of different spices.

Basic Ingredients:

250g (2 cups) all-purpose flour

5g (1 teaspoon) baking soda

2g (1/4 teaspoon) salt

115g (1/2 cup) butter

110g (3/4 cup) brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten well

525g (6-7 - around 2 1/3 cups) mashed overripe bananas

(definitely overripe for the real banana taste)

Optional:

100g walnuts

100g unsalted cashews

100g raw almonds

100g dried cherries (or whatever you have in the pantry)

100g dark chocolate chips (or milk or white chocolate chips)

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1 teaspoon ground allspice (or whatever spices your taste dictates)

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 11 x 4 inch loaf pan (I used my large bread tin). If you don't add the optional ingredients, use a 9 x 5 pan.

Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, spices, cherries and nuts in a large bowl. In another bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar (use the Scrape-a-Blade if you have one). Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into the flour mixture. As this is a quick bread, stir just enough to moisten so it doesn't toughen. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a wooden skewer inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let the banana bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

Alternatively, you can make muffins. The basic recipe makes 12 muffins. With the optional ingredients, I usually make around 18 muffins with the amounts above. These only have to cook for 20 - 25 minutes.

See the reviews and video of the KitchenAid Scrape-a-Bowl on the Williams-Sonoma Website. No more stoppping to scrape down the sides. It mixes liquid and soft batters fabulously and works in half the time. Overall, a very efficient mixer blade and well worth the price ($49AU).

Positives:

It conforms to the shape of the mixer bowl

It scrapes the entire sides and bottom of the bowl with every revolution

It has a curved shape that folds the ingredients towards the middle

It has a taller blade that reaches ingredients higher in the bowl for more uniform mixing

It has parallel crossbars that mixes faster

It mixes in half the time of the original blade

Negatives:

You can't use it for heavy doughs such as cookies or it may break.

Some reviews state that it doesn't work as well for frostings, whip cream, and creaming butter and sugar. My advice is to use castor (super fine) sugar for most recipes and use the original blade for cookies.