Delicious - July 2015 - Dulce de Leche Banana Bread

Congratulations to delicious magazine on the achievement of reaching 150 issues and just look at the amazing cake on the front cover. I definitely want to make that. It may make an appearance for our next Toastmasters meeting. Even if it does take 12 eggs to make it! I mean that is a lot of eggs. However, I really do want to make it...

I am surprised by the amount of recipes in this issue that I actually want to make given how meh I have been so far this year. Although I am starting to think that has had a lot more to do with my lack of cooking mojo. Thinking back over the past 6 months and, for the most part, I have been making some pretty banal food. Nothing wrong with it, easy to do and involves little thinking but nothing to be blogging about. I am sure you don't want to read about me cooking lamb cutlets & veg or steak & veg. Plus you really can only blog lasagne once. I've already blogged the curried sausages. Hmm, there may have been a couple of interesting things in there but I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Oh, there was one really excellent roast pork belly but I have a rather dreadful out of focus picture. I guess I'll just have to make it again.

I have actually already made something else from this issue and will write about that in another post. I would also like to make Matt Wilkinson's Garlic, Ginger & Sesame brown rice, add some chicken & greens and I think it would make a fabulous dinner. His Pumpkin B'Stilla with beetroot & yoghurt sauce sounds really interesting too. I have all but the filo pastry to make it. I hate filo pastry. I can never get it to work for me. I would just use some puff pastry & roll it a little thinner. I might add that to my menu plan for some time this week...Wednesday maybe. (Hahahaha, I said "menu plan"... like that happens)

After mentioning about the endurance of dulce de leche in the fridge and how I had finally used the last of it in my snickers cupcakes I discovered that I needed some again. So I threw all the ingredients in the thermomix and off it went. I actually overcooked it a little so it is a bit more "set" than I would like it to be but all I have to do is toss some in the microwave for a minute on soften/melt function. Plus, it doesn't make any difference when sitting eating it with a spoon. lol. I really liked this banana bread recipe. The addition of the dulce de leche added an amazing moistness to it. Surprisingly it wasn't that sweet. It was welcomed with open arms at my Toastmasters meeting. I would make a few changes to the recipe though. The first is that I would leave out the chocolate chips. Only 50 g in the entire mix and it just seemed kind of pointless. I maintain that walnuts aren't all that nice of a nut so I used pecans for the nuts. I didn't have a loaf pan large enough so I put it in my 20 cm square pan. I think the 22 cm would have been better, it took a long time to cook and I had to foil the top as it was starting to darken too much. I also didn't use the coffee icing on it as we have a member who loathes coffee. I think that there was plenty of favour in it without the coffee icing. My final change would be to put the batter in the cake pan and then dollop and swirl the dulce de leche in as is really dispersed putting it in before putting in the pan.

 Dulce de Leche Banana Bread

adapted from delicious magazine July 2015 pg 88

1 1/4 c (300 g) sour cream

100 ml thickened cream

1 tsp bicarb soda

125 g unsalted butter, melted, cooled

250g caster sugar

2 eggs lightly beaten

1 tsp ground cinnamon (I used 2) 

2 cups (300g) plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 large ripe bananas, mashed

1 cup pecans, chopped (I didn't bother toasting) 

1/3 cup dulce de leche

Pre-heat oven to 160 C (fan-forced)

Grease 22 cm square pan

Combine sour cream, cream & soda in a both, set aside for 10 minutes. 

Mix in butter, sugar & eggs. 

Mix in dry ingredients and then bananas and pecans. 

Spread batter in pan and dollop dulce de leche on and use a knife to swirl through the batter. 

Bake 1 hour, checking at 50 min if using the larger 22 cm pan. If using 20 cm cook about 1 hr 15 min.