I had to test a piece just to make sure it was delicious.
I got to put my new Omnia stove oven to use during this passage. This is a relatively new purchase that falls into the necessity category for me and would probably fall into Jeff’s luxury category. It was a fairly expensive purchase (I think about $60), but it came highly recommended by other boat owners with rudimentary galleys like our own.
If you’re just joining us, I should tell you that I cook (almost) everything on a tiny marine grill called a Magma grill. I warm things up on our Dickinson diesel stove (when it’s working). I know it’s possible to bake on a grill with a dutch oven, pressure cooker or other similar implements, but every time I’ve tried to bake something, I end up burning it. The diesel stove is not really up for baking. The biscuits I baked in the diesel stove turned into one big biscuit cookie because it was such low heat.
Banana bread was going to be my inaugural dish for two reasons 1) we had two very ripe bananas on board and it turns out that fruit flies will find you even when you’re floating in the middle of the ocean…therefore we needed to eat them up and rob the flies of their sweet source and 2) I hadn’t had my fill of baked goods in too too long.
I adapted this recipe from the Boat Galley Cookbook, which is a must have for boaters or any international traveler with a limited kitchen.
This bread turned out SO WELL! It was delicious, and moist, and just sweet enough (I reduced the amount of sugar from the original recipe). If I can cook this bread in the middle of the ocean, on four hours of sleep, using a propane grill then there’s no reason you couldn’t cook this killer bread under regular cooking conditions. Try it out, you’ll like it.
Fail proof banana bread
Two overripe bananas
1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter (slightly softened)
2 eggs
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder*
1/2 tsp of baking soda*
1 3/4 cups of flour
Chopped walnuts (optional)
Mix together all of the wet ingredients (bananas, butter, eggs). Mix together all of the dry ingredients (sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, flour) and slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ones.
Grease a bread tin or muffin tins or the Omnia stove oven. Fill the tin(s) 3/4 of the way. Add the chopped walnuts to the top.
If you’re cooking with a real oven, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cook the banana bread for 55 minutes or until it looks done (brown on the top). Insert a fork, knife, toothpick, whatever. When it comes out clean, you’re good.
If you’re cooking on a Magma grill with an Omnia, turn the grill onto low and that grill will be hot in NO time. Put the Omnia on top of the diffuser plate and cover it with the grill lid. Set a timer for 6 minutes. When six minutes are up, rotate your Omnia. Continue rotating the Omnia every six minutes for 24 minutes. Insert a fork, knife, toothpick, whatever. When it comes out clean, you’re good.
Let your bread sit for 5-10 minutes, serve it up warm with butter, lots and lots and lots of butter.
We ate this entire loaf of bread in less than 24 hours. Yum.
*I didn’t have baking soda onboard, so I just used baking powder. You can replace the baking soda by just adding three times as much baking powder. So for this recipe I used 2 1/2 tsp of baking powder. Alternately, if you don’t have baking powder you can use baking soda with an acid. So for this recipe you could use 1/4 tsp of baking soda with 1 1/2 tsp of vinegar or lemon juice.