Biblical Banana Bread

There are many different recipes for banana bread. Mine, of course, is the best because the recipe comes directly from the Bible, the original Canadian Living Cookbook—because, let’s face it, Canadians know how to live. Americans, who think we Canadians are unadventuresome, beer-drinking, beavertail eating bores, have clearly never sat down with the the Bible.

The Bible is the  only book of cooking you’ll ever need (Well, other than a good Thai Cookbook and all the recipes passed down on little scraps of paper from you mother and mother-in-law. Oh, and you could also buy a Tyler Florence  and an Ina Garten cookbook, but in all likelihood, they’ve put their nose in the Bible a few times too)

The Bible

Mashed up Bananas

The set up

If you don’t treat your Bible well,  the pages stick together and mold starts to grow in the crevices. This is blasphemous, but sometimes in your zeal of cooking and creating, ingredients splatter across the pages like bugs on a windshield. Soon your Bible is almost indecipherable, and when you go to buy another, you realise it’s been replaced, but another version. The King James version of cooking is gone!

With your Bible down to only two readable pages, your cooking starts to suffer and you turn to other banana bread recipes.  The results are catastrophic . Without guidance from the Bible your banana bread becomes rubbery and dry.

Luckily your brilliant  sister manages to find a vintage copy of the Bible at some random book & Bible reseller and you are once again able to cook. Your banana bread rises like the summer sun. As restitution to the gods of cooking you vow to shield your Bible from flying dough like a dentist dodging debris during a root canal.

RECIPE

1 cup [250 mL] Mashed very ripe bananas
Note: the riper the better
1 cup [250 mL] granulated sugar
1/4 cup [50 mL] vegetable oil
1/2 cup [125 mL] sour cream
2 [2] eggs, beaten
1 & 1/2 cups [375 mL] all-purpose flour
1 tsp [5 mL] baking powder
1 tsp [5 mL] baking soda
1/2 tsp [2 ml] salt

Mix the wet ingredients and sugar together with mixer. In another bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until combined.

pour into greased and floured loaf pan.

Bake at 325 degrees for approximately an hour or until brown and firm on top.**

Allow to cool on a rack. Eat and try to share.

**If, after baking for 30 minutes, your power goes off, let it rest in the over for about 3 hours or however long it takes your power company to fix the problem. When the power comes back on jack up the heat in the oven for about 20 minutes. The result is a somewhat dense but delightful banana bread. Mind you, you need a small jack-hammer to get it out of the pan, but once you finish with that challenge the results are really quite remarkable.