The Ultimate Banana Bread?

I like banana bread.  I don't know too many who don't.  I make a pretty good banana bread if I do say so myself.  Lots of people have asked me for my recipe and I'm always happy to share.

I've made lots of different types of banana bread like Bourbon Banana Bread and Blueberry Banana Bread.  I still like my plain old banana bread better.  I want to taste banana in my banana bread.  But when I saw a Facebook post from Cook's Illustrated that they had created the ultimate banana bread, well I just had to try it.


You can watch the video of the Cook's Cast making this bread and get the recipe by clicking HERE.

There are six, yes six bananas in this recipe!  I only had three getting ripe so I had to get three more and close them up in a bag until I had six ripe bananas.

 

The trick, they say, is to go get some of the moisture out of the bananas to concentrate their flavor.  How do you do this?  You microwave the bananas!

Five of the six bananas are placed in a bowl and covered with plastic wrap.  As you can see I still haven't used up all that red plastic wrap!  Poke some holes in the plastic and after a few minutes in the microwave quite a bit of liquid comes off them.  I got nearly a cup! 

This liquid is then reduced down to just a quarter of a cup and added back to the bananas.

As you'll see in the video, the cast of Cook's Illustrated wasn't terribly impressed with the visual of these microwaved, mashed bananas.  Neither was I.  But they were right, it smelled amazing!

The rest of the ingredients are mixed together and the batter is placed in a prepared pan.  Here's where the sixth banana comes in.  The banana is sliced on a bias (because just round pieces of banana wouldn't look good) and shingled on each side of the loaf.

To top it off the entire top of the loaf is sprinkled with sugar!  The bananas "brulee" in the oven!  About an hour later this is what emerges from the oven.  It's a pretty loaf.

 

After a little wait we cut into it and tasted it.  Is it the ultimate banana bread?

I'm going to be honest, I like my banana bread better.  This recipe had quite a bit of brown sugar in it which gives it a caramel note I don't really care for.  I like the flavor of banana all by itself.  This recipe is also a lot more work than mine!