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!

    7 comments:

    Catherine Anne said...

    THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR THIS!

    Anonymous said...

    Mmmmm, looks good and thanks for the weight for weight tip.

    Joyti said...

    It looks delicious.
    You know, I was looking at Amazon for a GF baking book, just to learn some of the basics. Any recommendations?

    Anonymous said...

    MMMMMMM,..Your gf banana bread lkooks tremendously tasty!


    Lovely bread!

    Rahel from TX said...

    This cake is a minor miracle!!! Its so unbelievably good!!! Juanita, it seems like magic that this cake is so awesome made from rice flour alone! I'm so used to mixing flours that this was almost too good to be true. But it is true: soft crumb and very, very delicious! My whole family, not just by gluten-allergic son, loved it! As I commented about your chocolate banana cake (another winner, but this is spectacular because its just rice flour), this cake is as good and even better than a regular (wheat) flour cake. I cannot thank you enough for this recipe. Changes I made to accommodate my son's allergies are 2 heaping tablespoons of condensed milk instead of 2 eggs, reducing sugar to 3/4cup since the condensed milk is very sweet, and not using nuts. Congratulations on a fabulous cake! I will say a prayer of thanks for you and I will also pray for God's tender mercies to be with you.

    Juanita said...

    Thanks for all your comments!

    @ Indi.Tea: I didn't have a recommendation in February, but I have one now: Gluten Free Bible by Jacki Passmore. It's a concise little book, but a great start point.

    @ Rahel: Thank you for your marvelous feedback! I tell you, learning this baking by weight trick has changed my baking life. I was most impressed by how well good old rice flour performed. Thank you for your good wishes. Blessing to you and your family as well :-)

    P.S. I fixed that yoghurt cake recipe for you! I'm so sorry it flopped. I know how frustrating and costly that can be. My apologies for my error.

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