Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Martha Stewart's Banana Bread (Gluten-Free)


This comforting and more-ish banana bread stays moist for days; something of a feat for many gluten-free breads. The original, gluten-filled recipe can be found at marthastewart.com.

This was the first recipe where I didn't substitue cup-for-cup with gluten-free flour. Instead, I went and found a site which lists what the weight of a cup of rice flour is versus a cup of normal cake flour (btw, it's quite a bit heavier), and so modified the recipe accordingly. This handy trick allowed rice flour to stand alone as the flour of choice without dragging the recipe down to a heavy end-product. You live and you learn, right.

OR = Original Recipe


Ingredients:
  • 113g/1 stick butter (room temp)
  • 75g sugar (OR: 1 cup)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 195g rice flour (OR: 1 and a half cups of cake flour)
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup mashed bananas (very ripe)
  • 125ml/half cup buttermilk (OR: 125ml sour cream)
  • 1 tsp cinnamon (OR: 1 tsp vanilla)
  • 125ml/half cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)
Method:
  1. Pre-heat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (OR: 350 fahrenheit).
  2. Butter a loaf pan.
  3. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
  4. Add eggs and beat.
  5. Add flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and mix till just combined.
  6. Stir through bananas, buttermilk and nuts.
  7. Pour into the prepared loaf tin.
  8. Bake for around 1 hour 10 minutes, but start checking from 40 minutes.
  9. Remove from the oven when a cake skewer comes out clean, rest in the pan for 10 minutes and then turn out to cool.
Substitutions for eggs and nuts:

My thanks to Rahel from TX on her wonderful feedback and tips! Here they are:
- 2 heaping tablespoons of condensed milk in place of the eggs; and
- reducing sugar to 3/4 cup if using the condensed milk; and
- leave out the nuts!