Month: January 2022

Dad’s Banana Bread

/ Susie / 2 Comments

Those who know me well know that I’m not a big vegetable eater. I’ve at least evolved to the point where I do happily eat some vegetables, but they’re still not the most-coveted items on my grocery list. One illustration: I recently signed up for a local meat share, but don’t imagine that I’d ever enroll in a farm/vegetable share. I suppose if there were such a thing as a flour share I might consider that, but I’ve been happily buying King Arthur all-purpose flour in 25-pound sacks at Costco and storing it in an 18-quart bin.

So, I had a very small taste of what I imagine it must be like for people who are in a CSA: A couple of weeks ago I did a curbside-pickup order from a nearby supermarket (for Bonne Maman preserves, Hershey’s milk chocolate bars, and Jet-Puffed marshmallows — yes, s’mores were part of the plan, and yes, this was a ridiculous grocery order) and the person who picked my order mixed up mine with someone else’s order. They had loaded the bags in the back of my car and I drove off, so I didn’t figure this out until I got home and looked in the bags. Of course, I called the store right away and they promptly delivered my stuff, but they didn’t want me to bother bringing back the wrong stuff. That left me with a couple of bags of someone else’s food order.

Let’s end this already too-long story by saying that the wrong order had actual fresh fruits and vegetables in it, including two bunches of bananas. I actually can’t stand eating bananas. I spent my first couple decades of adulthood buying bananas and trying to convince myself to eat them, but at some point I accepted that it was futile. I just don’t like them. I happily eat my way through apples, oranges, peaches, pineapples, and grapes, but bananas are just non-starters for me. This meant that I needed to do some banana-based baking.

Here’s the first installment. The recipe (provided below), from a 1965 cookbook published by the Salisbury, NH Congregational Church, was made frequently by my mother. It was so popular in our house that I had to check with my sister, Jennifer, to find out if the recipe name (“Dad’s Banana Bread”) came from us or from the cookbook (answer: the cookbook).

It couldn’t be easier. My mom simplified the steps so that much of the work is done by a food processor, and the whole thing comes together in minutes. I’ve been using parchment for everything lately, even things baked in loaf pans and springform pans, and this was no exception. I’m glad I did. The loaf slipped easily out of the pan and I very much like the crust that formed.

This bread is delicious. Spreading butter on it makes it even more delicious. Apparently, this is the way to get me to eat bananas!

I have two baggies in the freezer, each filled with 510g of mashed banana in anticipation of making this recipe (“Ultimate Banana Bread“) from Smitten Kitchen, possibly twice. I wanted to start with the OG banana bread that mom always made, but I am interested in comparing it with the SK version. So now you know the fate of the unexpected two bunches of bananas.

Here’s the recipe for Dad’s Banana Bread, from the 1965 Salisbury, NH Congregational Church Cookbook:

1 stick of butter, softened (I used salted)
1 C sugar (200g)
1 egg
3 ripe bananas (I used 3½ which came to 440g, not including peels)
¼ C chopped walnuts

2 C all-purpose flour (I used 260g of King Arthur All-Purpose)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt (I used fine sea salt)

In a food processor, process the butter and sugar, then add the egg and process. Add the bananas and process, then add the walnuts and process. Whisk the dry ingredients together, then fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture only until blended. Pour the batter into a buttered loaf pan (I used a parchment-lined 4″ x 10″ x 3″ pan, which is just under 7 cups). Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes (see note below). Remove promptly from pan and let cool on a rack.

Note on bake time: It took me 65 minutes to get a clean cake tester inserted into the center of the loaf. The bread was not overbaked, so maybe the bake time is just low on the recipe. I would use a cake tester to decide when it’s finished, and also lightly press on the top of the bread in the middle to see if the middle feels as stable as the ends. I used an unusual loaf pan size (4″ x 10″) that is slightly narrower and longer than a typical loaf pan, so it’s possible that this impacted the baking time. Anyway, the cake tester method worked.

Honey Whole Wheat Bread and Rolls

/ Susie / Leave a comment

I got to participate in another King Arthur online class with Christine, this one about Honey Whole Wheat Bread and Rolls. The recipe was easy and good, and we got some nice results. I suspect that there was some issue with my proving, since the crumb is uneven. You can see in the third photo above that it’s more open in the top two thirds of the loaf and more dense in the bottom third.

I also wish I had been able to get a browner crust on the sides and bottom, so that’s something to tinker with in the future. The top crust was very nice, but the bottom and sides didn’t match it. The sourdough boules that I make are not baked in a pan, so I’m not used to that particular aspect. I bake the sourdough in a preheated pan and never have problems with it browning on the bottom. For this whole wheat sandwich bread, I’m assuming I have to put the pan on a preheated baking stone and/or keep it lower in the oven to get more bottom browning.

It’s a nice bread: soft, easy to make, easy to cut, and with an unassertive flavor; very well-suited to sandwiches.

It’s been fun and educational to gain more experience baking yummy bread!

In Memoriam

/ Susie / 4 Comments

By Ikeda Christmas Cookie standards, these sugar cookies are the OG. And, my mother, Akiko Ikeda, was the OG of our family. My mother passed away peacefully on December 30th in Wisconsin, after a long illness. The full obituary is here, and Dan Woog wrote a very nice reflection on her as part of a group of people who made notable contributions to our hometown.

For me, the Ikeda Christmas Cookies are a major dimension of my childhood connection to my mom. She taught me how to make these sugar cookies (and the Viennese crescents and rainbow wreaths, shown here), and every bit of my sense for how these cookies should be comes directly from her.

To begin with, the sugar cookies are rolled unbelievably thin. About a millimeter. Baked in a 400°F oven, they can turn from raw to burnt in seconds. They’re almost like baked potato chips, but made out of cookie dough. To facilitate the rolling (and re-rolling) without the dough becoming tough, my mom learned (from somewhere?) that the counter must be dusted not with flour, but with a mixture of flour and sugar.

Many of my cutters come from her collection, and she and I both have always loved little tiny cutters that can be used to get more cookies out of one rolling of dough.

The forbidden silvery balls

In my family there is a silly (but true!) story of a little glass vial of silvery sugar balls that my mother kept in her cookie decorating box for our entire lives, but which we were never allowed to use. These miniature, shiny jawbreakers were deemed too hard on the teeth, so despite being very pretty, were never actually put on anything. If any innocent friends happened to join in for the decorating and reached for the vial, they’d be promptly set straight. But, there the silvery balls lived, tantalizingly, in the box alongside other decorations. For decades. And, out of sheer sentimentality, that very vial now sits in my own cookie decorating box.

My mother liked to give us gifts that were “themed”. Music notes and bunny rabbits for me. Sailboats, labrador retrievers, and dragonflies for Jennifer. Ladybugs and cats for Louise. You can see these themes in the variety of cutters that I have now.

My mother would spend many hours making hundreds of cookies, candies, and fruitcakes every December, and she would assemble saran-wrapped paper plates laden with assortments, then send us around the neighborhood delivering them to family friends.

My mom was generous, loving, dedicated to working hard for others, and exquisitely exacting. She wouldn’t come out and tell me that I was doing something wrong, but she might instead take over a task from me if I wasn’t quite doing it right. It gave me pride when I became skilled enough to be able to share in more and more of the steps myself. Eventually, as her eyesight, dexterity, and energy declined, I took on the mantle for the cookie production in the family. As my first blog post explains, I’ve had to take years-long pauses from them, but every time I come back to making these cookies, I’m immediately at my mother’s elbow again, endeavoring to make cookies that would be mom-approved.

If you know me at all, you’ll recognize that striving for “mom-approved” isn’t limited to Christmas Cookies.