Chocolate-Ginger-Banana Bread

There is a side note in the book All Cakes Considered about the crazy idea that you can put over-ripe bananas in the freezer and save them to make banana bread. Do people really not know about that? Usually, when I make banana bread, it's not because I have a hankerin' for banana bread, it's because I'm cleaning out my freezer and there are 9 old bananas in there (I have actually taken bananas out of the freezer that had absolutely no banana left inside of them- there's a science experiment for you!) Anyway, after I read A Homemade Life I wanted to try the chocolate ginger banana bread recipe because it sounded crazy enough to be good, and it was great! Then I made the mistake of taking a loaf to work and having a co-worker call it "the cat's ass" which, upon grilling him to find out if I should be honored or insulted (apparently "the cat's ass" is a compliment!) and I told him I'd make him some. So right after I made the banana bread cake, I made 3 loaves of the chocolate ginger banana bread.
Here's the problem: I had to buy all these bananas from the local co-op, and all their bananas are on the yellow-green side, not the yellow-brown side of ripeness. This meant, one- that I kept eating them, and two- when I finally had enough for the cake and the 3 loaves, they still were hardly "ripe", which means not as easy to mush. When you thaw bananas that have been in the freezer for awhile, they just squeeze right out of the peel and practically mush themselves (it's kind of gross). The yellow ones would take some work, so I decided to use the kitchen aid. In the past when I've made multiple loaves of banana bread, I made each loaf seperate. This time I decided to just triple the batch and split it between the 3 loaf pans. I didn't know if it would work, but it seemed easier. I started with the dry ingredients, and just stirred them up in the kitchen aid. Easy. Except it practically filled the thing. (I also used about half wheat flour instead of all white). I dumped that into another bowl, then started on the wet ingredients.
The cake and the triple banana bread recipe combined called for 10 eggs. I maybe got the egg shells mixed in from about all but one egg. That is why I crack the eggs in a separate bowl, spend a couple minutes digging out the shells, before adding to the kitchen aid. It's frustrating but in the end, less crunchy if you do it that way. Plus you can dig out any mucus or embryos from the egg, if they happen to be there. Then I added the bananas- 1/2 a banana at a time. There were 9 bananas to add, so that really kept me from having sore hands. That would have been a lot of mushing! Instead of the butter the recipe calls for, I added all applesauce (unsweetened) and instead of whole milk yogurt I added low fat (no other reason than it's what I had). But in the end, it makes for a healthy loaf of bread! I might have over-mixed the wet ingredients in the kitchen aid though, because when it was all mixed up, it really smelled like a smoothie.
This recipe calls for chocolate chips and chopped crystallized ginger. I never used crystallized ginger before I read A Homemade Life and now I buy the stuff more than I buy milk. It's pretty awesome, and if you eat it on it's own, it solves the problem of onion or garlic breath.

So I might like the ginger in this bread more than the average person- which results in my "1 cup" of chopped ginger looking like this!














Now that I had a big bowl of dry ingredients and a big bowl of wet ingredients- I needed a super huge bowl to mix them in. This is something you can do if you happen to be married to a ceramic artist and you own enormous ceramic bowls (that happen to be heavy as hell and are really only used for things like this, or if you are making a salad for about fifteen people). If you aren't married to a ceramic artist (I'm sorry for you) you can maybe use a stock pot or a big kettle, or a 5 gallon bucket- you can make this batch as big as you've got the bowl to hold it in. That's the rule. However, having a batch this big means it's a little harder to stir it all up, so you'll find unincorporated chunks of flour at the bottom. Try to get those all mixed in or you'll have ugly flour chunks in your finished loaves of bread.


The test was a success- all 3 seemed to be mixed well and they turned out fine. Next time, I might only make a double batch, or- if I can wait that long- as many as I have enough bananas in the freezer for.

When you spend all day in the kitchen, it's important to stop every once in awhile to give kitties some attention.