Yesterday I took on The Food Network Cooking Club Challenge for the month of May and made my TV baking teacher Anna Olson’s White Chocolate Banana Loaf. Delicious! It was genius to make a banana bread with pastry flour, the result is super light and not super dense like some banana breads can be. The white chocolate takes it over the top! Quite literally. I decided to take the opportunity and share a visual tutorial with you on how to make banana bread. It really is very simple and you do not need to use a mixer. I was just very tired and decided to let my mixer Rebel have some fun.
Here are all of the ingredients you will need to make this banana bread. The only unusual components are the pastry flour and white chocolate. Other than that you have baking powder, baking soda, sugar, vanilla, 1 egg, two bananas, cinnamon, unsalted butter and salt. If you have all these, you are ready to bake!
First, you cream the room temperature unsalted butter with the white sugar. This is my token action shot! Look at Rebel go!
You add an egg and some vanilla.
Sifting seems to have become passé these days, most people just whisk ingredients together but when Anna says to whisk, I whisk. When you use pastry flour, it gets very clumpy and sifting here is essential for creating a clump-free dough. You add the dry ingredients, alternating with the mashed bananas to create the dough.
My favourite way of chopping up chocolate is with a bread knife. I slice it at the corners to get these little flecks. I chopped up extra so that I could melt it and drizzle it on top later.
Fold in the white chocolate by hand and put the batter in a greased and floured loaf pan. Bake!
While the loaf is baking I decided to slowly melt the white chocolate over warm water but at usual, I screwed up the white chocolate. White chocolate is way more sensitive than regular chocolate. Essentially, it is not chocolate at all, it is all cocoa butter which melts at a very low temperature. Mine got too hot and seized. I read once that if that happens to add some oil to your chocolate which I did and it did help but there were still some lumps. I was losing daylight to take pictures and just said, what the hell? I’ll just use it the way it is.
Here is the loaf right out of the oven! For some reason it hardly rose at all, I am going to have to test my baking powder and soda to make sure they are still working. Regardless, this is a beautiful banana loaf. In fact I had friends over last night and one of my friends saw the banana bread and said, “What’s that?!” I happily shared a piece with her as we watched a movie. Despite the bread not rising and the white chocolate drizzle seizing and clumping, it was still a hit. For me, that is a foodie success story.
It looks gorgeous with the chocolate drizzled on top!!
My mouth is watering! That’s so yummy looking….
I learned my lesson. I came to your blog with my breakfast, and although a bagel with salmon cream cheese is not the same as this scrumptious banana cake, I didn’t chew on my fingers this time 🙂
Banana bread with chocolate. Sounds like heaven!
That looks awesome and I’m so going to make it! I freaking always end up with my chocolate seizing (lol!). I learned to thin it back up with a little heavy cream (I keep it on hand for cream sauces and the occaisional really fat coffee!). Makes a nice, smooth ganache. I’ve never done it with white chocolate, but I’d assume it would work like chocolatey chocolate.
…insert all kinds of yummy noises!
Ohhhh Suzie – first thing I’m doing tomorrow is heading to the store for pastry flour & white chocolate!!!…if I can wait that long!
I am loving this FOODIE BLOG!!!!!!!!
I am so happy you all like the banana loaf! It really does taste as good as it looks despite it being quite flat, LOL.
Smart decision Genie Sea although you’re making me hungry with bagel with salmon cream cheese!
Silvermoonwitch, yes, heavy cream is another way to go for chocolate that seizes, very true.
Way to go Bohemian Mom! I’m so excited you’re going to pick up pastry flour and white chocolate, there is so much you can do with those ingredients.
Awww….shucks, thank you. I’m so glad you’re all enjoying my foodie adventures!
I’ve never used anything other than regular whole grain flour for banana loaf (unless I am out then I grind up chickpeas and oatmeal and crap in the blender and pretend its real flour). Ok I admit that I have a weird banana loaf recipe. How does pastry flour compare?
That’s a crazy way to bake Twyla, fascinating! Pastry flour is very delicate although is absolutely must be sifted. Dry, it’s quite clumpy but in baked goods it is very lovely. I would never bake a cake with anything but so it was interesting to try in a loaf. Loved it! Very moist and delish.