TOP BANANA: ARTURO'S AUGUST BREAD

Wednesday's banana bread was good but not good enough. There wasn't enough banana, it was a little dry and it wasn't sweet enough.

With ingredients like vegetable oil and sour cream, the sour cream banana bread recipe I stumbled across during my research promised at the least to be more moist. But I still liked the idea from Mark Bittman's "How To Cook Everything," of including coconut in the bread so I ammended the recipe, making a few changes to ensure that the bread would be moist.

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild it, we have the technology...better than it was before. Better, moister, tastier."

Breadnet.net's Sour Cream Banana Bread Recipe

1 Cup Sugar
½ Cup Oil
2 Eggs
1 Cup Mashed Bananas (2 medium)
½ Cup Sour Cream
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
1-½ cups All-Purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
½ Teaspoon Salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour bottom only of a 9 X 5 loaf pan. In large bowl, beat together sugar and oil. Add eggs, bananas, sour cream and vanilla, blend well. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup, level off. Add flour, baking soda and salt, stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake at 350°F for 50 to 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes. Remove from pan. Cool completely. Wrap tightly and store in refrigerator. Makes 1 loaf.

Tim D. Culey
Baton Rouge, La.

Thanks to Mr. Culey and Mark Bittman for the inspiration for my recipe, below which I'm very pleased with.

Arthur's August Banana Bread

1 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil
3 Mashed Bananas
½ Cup Sour Cream
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
1-1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
½ Teaspoon Salt
½ Cup Shredded, Unsweetened Coconut
½ Cup Chopped Walnuts

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour bottom only of a 4 X 5-inch, 2-inch tall loaf pan. In large bowl, beat together sugar and oil. Add eggs, bananas, sour cream and vanilla, blend well. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup, level off. Add flour, baking soda and salt, stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in ½ cup coconut and ½ cup chopped walnuts then pour mixture into prepared pan.

Bake at 350°F for 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes. Remove from pan. Cool completely. Wrap tightly and store in refrigerator. Makes 2 loaves.

The result at left and at the top of the post. The reason why the bread is somewhat flat is because I used a shallow pan-- that's all I had. A deeper pan would work just as well, better probably. The extra banana, the sour cream and the vegetable oil made the bread much more moist than Wednesday's. I didn't taste much of the sour cream but I'm willing to slather some butter on and keep tasting until I figure out where it went.