Thirty-three

It is 10:30 PM and I am eating a slice of squash bread.  It is quiet in my kitchen.  I just had the shattering realization that some people—many people—I went to high school with now have multiple children.

I do not have children.  I have a one-bedroom apartment I can barely afford.  I have towels that get moldy. I have a sourdough starter and a few succulents that, some days, seem very challenging to keep alive.

I start to feel a little bad about all this, so I remind myself I just baked two loaves of very good bread.  And that I added a vegetable—not because I needed to—but because I wanted to.  Because I had a craving for butternut squash, and also for cake, and the universe was in low supply of acceptable recipes with these combined appetites.

So I took the bones of a banana bread recipe—a very good one—and browned some butter.  Added autumnal cues by way of cinnamon and allspice. Quartered a whole squash—without chopping a single finger off—and roasted it into submission.

It turns out very well, the bread, until I realize I have compared it to having a child and not killing a cactus.  I recently turned thirty-three and part of me feels I should have more grown-up ends by now. At the very least, maybe a yard?

But instead I live in a pest-free rental—with the black and white-tiled floors I wanted in my mid-twenties—in an area bolstered by the mafia and cannoli.

I have a smart, thoughtful, and very handsome boyfriend who never lets me drink alone, whom I love. I have maintained a job at a well-respected institution for over a decade. Plus I am old enough to swear and not feel bad about it.

I also have the sense to know bad things happen and enough emotional collateral, I think, to navigate them. And to realize that having kids does not make one feel any more put together.

In truth, I do not know if I even want a yard.  I certainly do not want to mow it.  What I do know, for now, is that I want butternut squash in dessert form.  And I know how to make that happen.

Brown Butter Butternut Squash Bread

Ingredients:

1½ cups mashed cooked butternut squash (about ½ a medium squash, see instructions below)

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

¾ cup packed dark muscovado sugar (or regular dark brown sugar)

2 eggs

½ cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

2½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp allspice

1 tbsp chopped fresh ginger (peeled)

1 cup chopped pecans

Instructions:

A few hours in advance (or the night before):

Set the oven to 425 degrees.  Grease a sheet pan lightly with olive or canola oil.  Quarter a whole butternut squash, leaving the skin on.  Place on the prepared pan, flesh side down and skin side up.  Roast for 60 to 70 minutes, or until it softens and the flesh side become caramelized (you’ll have to peak to see this).  Let cool and refrigerate until needed.

When you are ready to bake, set the oven to 350 degrees. Grease the bottom only of one 9 x 5-inch (or two 8 x 4-inch) loaf pan(s).

In a medium saucepan, heat the butter on medium-low until it becomes caramel-colored and starts to smell nutty; this will take 5 to 10 minutes, swirl the butter occasionally to prevent it from burning in spots and adjust the heat as necessary.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the sugars and brown butter on medium-high speed until fully combined and the mixture resembles wet sand (about 2 minutes).  Add the eggs one at a time, then the buttermilk, 1½ cups squash (flesh only), and vanilla; mix on medium-high until fully combined and smooth. 

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and allspice.  With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in three swift additions.  Stir in the ginger and pecans with a rubber spatula until just combined (make sure bits of flour are no longer visible).

Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center.  (Start checking around 55 minutes with the two smaller loaves.) Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack then, with a knife, loosen the sides of the bread from the pan.  Let cool on the wire rack for one hour before slicing.

Makes one 9 x 5 loaf or two 8 x 4 loaves

Notes:

-The pecans seemed seasonally timely, and were good, but I prefer walnuts in breads like this.

-In a pinch, substitute 1 tsp dried ginger for the fresh variety.

-It is decorative gourd season too, and if you need a proclamation mug, you can find it here.

Gold’s Banana Bread and Circumstance

Here is what I know about banana bread. It happens under two circumstances.

One is that you get a craving for it on a Tuesday and then wait for the bananas to become speckled and chestnut in spots.  Then you satisfy your needs on Friday. 

The other is that you buy more bananas than you, and anyone in close cohabitation, could humanly eat in a three or four day period.  The decreasingly yellow fruits make their presence known through aspirations of breakfasts gone by. And you must dispose of them.

The trash is not an option.  Banana bread happens when becoming wholly-rotten-to-the-point-of-disbandment is not an option.  Or when waiting is the only option.  It is a wonderful, strange thing that occurs when either too much or too little planning takes place. 

And thus, it is accessible to many types.  This is one of the reasons, I think, why it is so appealing.  It is likely the person who makes you banana bread is either a good planner or someone who often makes the best of a bad situation.  Both types are handy to have around.  Particularly with concurrent skills in the banana bread making department.

The last time I made a loaf was November, 2011.  I documented it on a trip with some friends to the mountains of New York.  (Banana bread is good on trips.)  A solid recipe for sure, but arguably a little too bedazzled when simplicity is what you require.  It also suffers from inaccessibility with the cardamom-haters that walk the earth.

Then, a few months ago, a classmate brought in two loaves of still-warm banana bread—one with chocolate chips—both served with honey butter. It was the best banana bread ever.  The recipe came from the back of a bag of Gold Medal flour. Which should be a lesson to all of us.

Perhaps we should pay more attention to our negligence and to the ordinary. After all, that’s the stuff really good banana bread is made of.

Gold’s Banana Bread

Adapted from the back of a Gold Medal Flour bag

Ingredients:

1¼ cups granulated sugar

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

2 eggs

1½ cups mashed very ripe bananas (3 or 4 whole)

½ cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

2½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

½ tsp cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts

Instructions:

Set the oven to 350 degrees. Grease the bottom only of one 9 x 5-inch (or two 8 x 4-inch) loaf pan(s).

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the sugar and butter on medium-high speed until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes).  Add the eggs, bananas, buttermilk, and vanilla and mix on medium-high until fully combined and smooth. 

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.  With the mixer running on low, add the flour mixture in three swift additions.  Stir in the walnuts with a rubber spatula until just combined (make sure bits of flour are no longer visible).

Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center.  (Start checking around 55 minutes with the two smaller loaves.) Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack then, with a knife, loosen the sides of the bread from the pan.  Let cool one hour before slicing.

Makes one 9 x 5 loaf or two 8 x 4 loaves

By Chance, Spiced Banana Bread with Cinnamon Crumble Topping

This banana bread happened by chance.  I was hungry for comfort.  I had gone to the market to make roast chicken and ended up with a bunch of bananas in my bag that did not belong to me.  I believe in things like that.  I took it to mean that I desperately needed banana-related baked goods in my immediate future.

As a general rule, I’m not good at anticipating banana bread.  You have to buy bananas and then get comfortable with them sitting quietly, turning into what look like intensely spotted yellow and brown giraffe necks.  I just can’t get relaxed about that sort of thing.  But I can get relaxed about eating banana bread.  So I let them ripen.  And then got to work.

This bread has since been slathered with warm memories.  I made it for a trip I took with some friends to the Adirondack Mountains.  On Saturday morning, we stood around the camp kitchen island and sliced off bits while we chatted and the coffee pot worked overtime.  As we reduced the bread to a mere nub, my mother flipped enough pumpkin pancakes to feed a forest of lumberjacks.  

We laughed a lot that weekend.  We tasted wine from a local winery called Montezuma, tried on fur hats, talked about hot cinnamon-sugared donuts, and visited quite possibly the most quintessential general store on the East Coast.

We also enjoyed our fair share of banana bread.  And so I’ve begun think of this recipe as living in the company of warm friends and brisk mornings.  It’s spiced with cardamom, ginger, and allspice and the crunchy cinnamon sugar crust just begs to be paired with a good cup of coffee and a companion or two.  It’s a fairly new recipe to me, but it already feels seasoned. It’s just that kind of bread.  The kind that makes you thankful for good friends and overripe bananas. 

Spiced Banana Bread with Cinnamon Crumble Topping

Adapted from Molly Wizenberg from Orangette

Ingredients:

The bread

1.5 cups all purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground cardamom (freshly ground if possible)

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 cup mashed bananas (about 3 bananas)

2 large eggs

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup water

(Plus butter and additional flour for the loaf pan)

The topping

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2.5 tbsp packed dark brown sugar

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter and flour a 9 x 5 loaf pan.  In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, spices, baking soda, and salt.  In a large bowl, combine the banana, eggs, oil, honey, and water.  Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and stir until combined.  Pour the batter into the buttered and floured loaf pan.

In a small bowl, mix the topping ingredients; sprinkle the topping on top of the batter.  Bake for about an hour or until a toothpick or cake tester comes about clean.  Cool the bread in its pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes and then remove the bread from the pan.  (Run a knife along the edges of the pan to loosen it; it may take some gentle coaxing and slight side tilting to remove the loaf, but you should be able to do it without losing much of the crumb topping.)  

Yield: 1 loaf

Notes:

-The cardamom really comes through in this loaf.  It's a nice change of pace from a standard banana bread and goes well with the crunchy cinnamon topping, but feel free to leave it off if you aren't keen on the spice.

-You may be inclined to forgo the topping, but it really makes the bread and moves it one step closer to coffee cake.  And this is a very, very good thing.

-This is a version of a version.  Molly Wizenberg attributes this recipe to Bakesale Betty and Bon Appétit.