Banana Bread

My girl has recently developed a fondness for listening to my childhood stories. Stories about my schools, friends and all sorts of things that I did when I was little. But I am going to leave out parts like the fact that her mommy joined a gang of boys racing bicycles, and maybe the reckless stories of me in a monsoon tunnel with fish nets catching guppies. These will have to wait until when she's older, I suppose.

One of her favourite stories goes like this: "When Mommy was a little girl and Aunty Nemo (aka Bigfoot) was a little girl, Mommy and Aunty Nemo like to bake cakes together. One day, Mommy and Aunty Nemo made a banana cake in school. So Mommy put the cake into the oven. But Mommy forgot to turn off the oven, and the cake got burnt. Aunty Nemo took out the burnt cake and it was black. Our teacher was very angry with us for burning the cake."

The above was based on true story except that I changed it somehow so that she could understand. We (Bigfoot and I) were making gingerbread during one of our school home economics lessons. For some reasons beyond us at that time, our gingerbread was burnt on the outside but uncooked on the inside. It was a total diseaster!

So last night, my girl told me she wanted to make banana cake just like Mommy and Aunty Nemo. I was quite reluctant at first, cos I was imagining how she would overturn the flour, or spill the mashed bananas, or smear butter all over my countertop. But I gave way under her insistant pleads. As it turned out, she was a great baker's assistant. She measured out the flour, beat eggs, mashed bananas and even help me pack up! Guess I need to have more faith in her.

She was so happy to see the end product and it sort of gave her a sense of satisfaction to have baked a cake. She even brought it to school for her snack!

Here's a close up.

The recipe is from Joy of Cooking ('97 ed.). I would call this a banana cake, but in the book it is called Banana Bread. Any diff? Really easy to make, although I must say that the method was somewhat new to me. Delicious, tender crumb but slightly on the sweet side despite my changing of white sugar to brown sugar. Another J.O.C. success. I wouldn't risk having my girl's first baking experience turn out to be a nightmare. Haha....