Thursday, August 7, 2008

Dorie and the Black and White Banana Loaf


One of the largest cooking groups on the web is known as Tuesdays With Dorie, devoted to baking their way through "Baking: From My Home To Yours" by Dorie Greenspan. This cookbook, although not familiar in Australia, is worth seeking out. It is beautiful to read, and by the sounds of the posts on the web, beautiful to cook as well. It is big and heavy, but beautifully photographed and produced. Despite the temptation of baking something amazing each week, I am resisting joining the group for the time being for a few reasons:
- based in the US, every fruit dessert is most likely out of season for us
- a weekly commitment seems a lot at this point (hey, I'm new to this stuff!!)

However, where I spot something that fits life here, I am planning to bake alongside the group. This week's recipe for a Black and White Banana Loaf*, was a revelation. I played around slightly with the recipe, using three bananas instead of the 1 1/2 prescribed, because I tasted the batter with 1 1/2 in it, and it wasn't banana-y enough for me. This meant however, that my batter was a little runny, especially the vanilla/banana half. Because it is important for the batter to hold its own a bit in order to marble successfully, I put the batter into the fridge for 20 mins to firm it up before I put it into the tin. In the tin I alternated splotches of dark and white batter, in three layers, then following Dorie's suggestion, ran my knife like a zig zag through the tin once only (repeat at your peril because the colours will mix together). It was lovely.

* Click the link for the recipe - I am respecting the rules of the Dorie Group by not posting the recipe here.

No comments: