San Bei Ji

I have been making gluten free banana bread and it is freakin’ awesome. I started by using the cup4cup recipe, but things have evolved since then and I wanted to share my modified creation, because as I said it is freaking awesome.

Ingredients

• 2 cups gluten-free flour
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ¼ cup honey that you got as a gift last winter and never opened
• ¼ cup maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon raw sugar (coarse granules – just go steal a packet from Starbucks)
• 2 eggs
• ⅓ cup very soft or melted butter
• 4 absolutely overripe bananas that you forgot to eat last week
• ⅓ cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup raisins (go on, hate me, I don’t care.)

Steps to Greatness

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Grease a loaf-shaped bread pan. Use butter if you’re civilized.
3. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon and set it aside.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar hard for about 5 minutes. Just beat the shit out of it.
5. Add the butter, mashed banana, buttermilk and vanilla and whisk until thoroughly combined.
6. Add the flour to the egg and banana mixture and stir until all of the flour is barely moistened, lumpy, and thick.
7. Ever so lovingly and gently add in the raisins. Kiss them goodnight.
8. Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan and spread it out until it is evenly spread out and relatively flat on top.
9. Sprinkle the raw sugar evenly across the top.
10. Bake for 45 minutes.
11. Turn the oven down to 300ºF and bake for an additional 15 minutes. (Or sometimes I’ll cook the thing in one go at 335ºF for 1 hour.)
12. Let it mostly cool down before slicing. Slightly warm is fine because let’s face it you can’t wait because your whole house now smells like amazing banana bread.

Sometimes I undercook it just slightly, carve it up into 1.5cm slices, wrap them in cellophane, and freeze them. Then when I take them out of the freezer, I toast them and they come out perfect.

Coming soon: Gluten-free mochi waffles. Oh yes, your majesty.