Well it's been one of those weeks. Work interfering with life way too much. In general, I tend to enjoy my job quite a bit, apart from a bit of a slump lately. But this week, I've been sitting around in meetings most of the week, essentially getting no work done. Admittedly meetings can be very important too, but three days in a row is a bit too much. And then there is the added horror of meeting food. I still can't believe I've survived three days on sandwiches, the most vile of foods. Empty calories with carbs, mayo and other disgusting things. My body is back in full sugar craving mode, and I decided that for one more day, I will allow myself something horribly unhealthy and from tomorrow it's back on track again.
I have never been a big fan of banana bread. I didn't use to think banana went very well with cakes or bread, I preferred to have it on it's own. However, for some strange reason, I have been having a massive banana bread craving for quite a while. I was very worried that I'm low on potassium or B6, so of course I have to give my body what it is craving. And then I ran into the idea of chocolate banana bread on Pinterest. And the rest is history. I browsed through all chocolate banana bread recipes I could get my hands on. Most of them required milk or soured cream, and I wanted to make something right there and then without having to go to the grocery store, so I settled on this recipe from Evil Shenanigans (a blog with the motto "sometimes it's good to be bad" has to be amazing, right?). I liked it because it only required ingredients I have at home, as well as the fact that it was based on oil instead of butter. Not that I mind using butter (as you should have discovered by now), but after making my orange-olive oil cake, I have started to enjoy the moistness that oil brings to a cake. Not that this is cake, of course, this is bread. Doesn't that make it sound much healthier? Oh and by the way, did you know that people with latex allergies can have an allergic reaction to bananas? I didn't either before today. At least that's what it said on the Interwebs. And we all know everything on the webs is true.
I only had two bananas, so I ended up rescaling the original recipe a bit, as well as adding in cardamom, which wasn't part of the original recipe. I just love cardamom in everything, and I think it goes very well with banana.
Banana chocolate bread (makes one loaf):
200 g brown sugar (I used 60g light brown muscovado, and 140g dark Muscovado)
75 ml oil (I used rapeseed oil)
2 eggs
2 over ripe bananas, mashed
170g white flour
1/3 cup (about 30 g) cocoa powder (I used my trusty Green & Black's organic)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup strong coffee (I used about 1.5 tbsp instant coffee)
The howto:
Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Mix together oil and sugar. Add eggs and beat until slightly fluffy. Add bananas, and the rest of the ingredients and give a quick mix. Pour into a bread tin or smaller baking tins, or a cake tin, or any other container you like. For a loaf, bake 45-55 minutes. Depending on your preferences, if you like a bit of goo in the centre of the loaf, make sure not to overbake. Let cool in the tin for half an hour, and then transfer onto a wire rack.
Then for the bad news... 1/8 of the recipe (about 2 slices of a loaf) contains 300 kcal, 12 g fat, 48 g carbs and 5 g protein. It certainly is no health food, but the good thing is it doesn't taste like health food either.
The verdict:
My craving for banana bread is most certainly satisfied. I've had way too many slices, and it was especially delish with a bit of butter on top. It could also work rather well with lemon icing on top, although that might be a bit too sweet maybe. The flavours blend together wonderfully, and for some reason, although you can't taste the coffee really, it does bring out the chocolate flavour very nicely. However, note how I didn't downscale the amount of cocoa from the original recipe. And yes, I know baking is an exact science, and you should always scale all ingredients of a recipe. Otherwise you will change the ratios of ingredients, and the result might not turn out as it should. Call me a rebel. I rescaled several things in the recipe. And it did turn out yummy nonetheless. The cake is incredibly soft and moist.
I especially love the flavour of the dark muscovado, that lovely rounded flavour of molasses. Next time I think I'll use only dark sugar. And another thing to try could be using a nut oil instead of rapeseed. Maybe macadamia oil. Or maye even throw in some chopped pecans or walnuts. And if you want to be really really bad, why not throw in some chocolate chips as well. Not that this cake (yes, there is no way of getting around it, it is a cake, not bread) isn't sweet enough as it is, there is quite a lot of sugar in it. For me, that is perfect. For someone with a somewhat more normal carbotolerance, it could border on the line of being too sweet.
One thing to notice is the baking time could have been a bit longer. This might be a result of rescaling some of the ingredients from the original recipe, but as I was making my way to the middle of the loaf (yes, I fully admit to now having eaten half a loaf of banana bread. I'm disgusting. But I did run 12 k this morning, so I kind of pre-burned off some of it) I realised it's a bit undercooked in the middle. Not that I minded, it's like mud pie but with banana. It's great! But you might want to cook your bread a tad longer than than the 40 minutes I did. Unless you enjoy chocolate-y goo. If you don't, what's wrong with you???
After reading the recipes on my blog, I'm sure it's hard to believe that I actually try to eat very healthily. It's just, in general my food during the working week is really boring, so there is not much to blog about (unfortunately I will do that when I have time though, just to prove my point). Incidentally most of my blog entries are from the weekends, when I give myself the freedom to go crazy and cook and bake all sorts of sinful treats and even including my arch enemies wheat, sugar and dairy. I'm sure that makes much more interesting reading than endless iterations of "prepare meat/fish and eat with spinach, cucumber, tomato and sweet pepper.
I've spent quite a bit of time online, doing research on the most healthy way to eat. Also, I have tried to lose quite a bit of weight during the last 6 months, so I needed to find ways to eat which were healthy and promoted weight loss. I know few things get people as passionate (and sometimes outright rude and agressive) as discussions on diet and what to eat. For me personally (and at some later stage I will throw in my thoughts about how I believe we are all unique and different in our response to our diets) a low carb diet has worked wonders. With "worked wonders" I mean that I lost over a third of my body weight in 5 months or so (and this is a good thing, there was plenty to lose).
One thing I have not been able to figure out despite loads of online research is fats. One person thinks virgin coconut oil is the only oil you should ever use for cooking, whereas others swear in the name of olive oil. As rapeseed is a very big business back home, we have been brainwashed from little kids to believe rapeseed oil is the most healthy option. Others still use nothing but butter believing all oils are the creations of the devil. Depending on the source, butter is either not bad at all for you, or really bad. The only thing most people (apart from the official health recommendations of government research institutes apparently) is that margarine is bad bad bad. So in the crossfire of all of this info, I have created my own philosophy for fats. First of all, I never use margarine. For baking, I use butter. For cooking, depending on what flavour I'm going for, I use either organic virgin coconut oil or rapeseed oil, these two should be the more thermostable fats. For salads, i use extra virgin rapeseed or extra virgin olive oil. Then I got some other oils, like macadamia nut and sesame seed that I sometimes use in cooking for their distinct flavours. So a mix and match, aiming to minimize the use of fats in general and heavily bias it towards the omega-6 and omega-3 rich oils. Whether this makes any sense or not I don't know, but that's how I roll. And last time I checked my blood lipid levels, they were all better than fine, but I'm keeping an eye on them regularly.
So, now I'm finally getting to the actual recipe part. Mayonnaise is something we have learned is unhealthy and should be avoided. And yes, again in general I agree as the calorie content is huge. But sometimes you just get a craving for it. And of course the only place to get your mayo is to get the industrial, preprocessed, full of additives stuff that keeps good in the fridge for a year. Because we all know that making mayo is difficult, you have to have a magic touch to get it to emulsify (you know, when it gets all thick and gooey). That is what I have always believed and what most recipes will have you believe. WRONG!!! Making mayo couldn't be easier, I have made it several times, and it has turned out perfect every time. So please, please, please give it a try next time you need mayo for something. Yes, it's a bit of an extra hassle, and yes, you will be cleaning up oil splatter from your kitchen walls, but you know it wont have any extra additives, you can make it from free range eggs and the best quality oils. I have used both macadamia nut oil and extra virgin rapeseed oil, both turned out very good. The macadamia nut oil has a bit of a sweeter taste and requires a bit more salt, whereas the rapeseed oil has a nuttier taste. Next time I might try olive oil, although I'm suspecting the taste of the olive oil might be a bit too strong. I also recently bought some flavoured extra virgin rapeseed oils which I'm excited to try out at some point. And finally, thank you for reading so far if you have (I'll try to keep my ramblings shorter in the future) and here we go (this is where is stole the recipe from)...
Mayo
1 egg (free range organic of course)
a squeeze of lemon juice
a few crushed mustard seeds (although I use whole, they do get crushed in the process if you use a hand blender for mixing)
220-240 ml oil
salt and pepper for seasoning
The howto:
Mix egg, lemon juice and mustard seed in a blender or high jug (it is a bit messy, so I recommend you use a big bowl or jug). Get your blender going (I use a hand held blender as you can see in the pics) and start adding oil. Just remember that you should start by adding small amounts, maybe one or two tablespoons at a time, and you will do fine. I do this by measuring the oil in a glass or cup or whatever (something with a pouring nozzle might be good and reduce the mess quite a lot), and using the blender with one hand, keep it constantly going, and pour a small amount of oil at a time into the jug all while keeping the blender going. If you accidentally happen to splash a bit too much, don't worry, you haven't ruined your mayo. At some point, a bit before halfway through the oil, the mayo magically starts to emulsify. Then you think, maybe I shouldn't add more oil, because it becomes too runny, but just keep adding, by some chemical reaction magic the mayo will get thicker the more oil you add. Towards the end, you can add bigger amounts of oil at a time (a few tbsp or so is ok). When all oil is added, season with salt and pepper.
The verdict:
Like I said before, I had always believed that making mayo requires superhero powers or magic skills. I'm glad I tried it, as this is obviously not true. The result of your efforts will be a really creamy and smooth mayo, and you can make any variation you like by adding flavourings. I want to try garlic mayo by adding a bit of garlic and partly using garlic flavoured oil, same for chilli, maybe add some vinegar and then I have a 'smoke' flavoured olive oil, which I'm very interested in trying. I guess it would make some sort of BBQ-y flavoured mayo. Maybe try one with herbs like parsley or chives, or maybe sundried tomatoes. I read somewhere that homemade mayo keeps in the fridge in a container for about a week, but I usually run out of it long before that, so I don't know.
