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.
