Recipes from the Book
Read The Ingredients of Us now!
To celebrate the launch of my debut novel, The Ingredients of Us, I’m sharing recipes from the book! Want sweet monthly recipes sent straight to your inbox? Head on over to Jenni’s Cafe, my monthly newsletter.
Too-Many-Bananas Bread
Find the recipe on Page 212
“Why is it that bananas are green forever, ripe for a moment, and brown too soon? Whether you bought more bananas than you needed or forgot to eat them while they were ripe, this recipe will save you.”
This is the recipe I make when I’m in the mood for homemade baked goods but am definitely NOT in the mood to bake. It’s the most low-maintenance recipe I’ve ever encountered and usually I make it with no more than a bowl, a fork, and a measuring cup. #lazysunday #lazyeveryday
The original recipe calls for walnuts and zero chocolate chips (the horror), but I’ve found that you can do either/or, or both, so long as the total amount adds up to about a cup. If you’re gluten-free, you can sub the flour cup-for-cup with a perfect-blend gluten-free flour and get a pretty great texture.
Except it’s not cake, it’s banana bread.
Ingredients:
2 cups ripe bananas (about 4 whole)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour (for gluten free, use Namaste Perfect Blend)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
1/2 cup walnuts (optional)
Steps:
Turn on music. What kind of person bakes without listening to music?
Mash the bananas with a fork, potato masher, or in a food processor. However you do it, just make sure they’re fully mashed (big lumps leave soggy spots in the finished bread).
Add sour cream, oil, and sugar and fully incorporate. To mix, either use a fork or buzz in the processor. It barely matters.
Add your eggs and vanilla. Again, doesn't really matter how you mix them in (just don't over-mix).
Sift flour, baking soda, and salt into the wet mixture, and fold in with a spatula (or in my case, a fork).
Throw in your chocolate chips and walnuts, which are optional, but trust me, you should add them.
Pour into a greased bread pan and garnish with more walnuts and chocolate chips (if you're using them, which you should) and bake at 350 degrees F for about an hour. It's done when you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.
Let it cool until you can handle the bread pan without burning yourself. At this point, you should be able to invert the pan and the bread will slide right out. I usually just dump the bread into my hand, then flop it onto a plate. Again: low-maintenance.
Serve warm (or not) with butter (or not). But seriously, slather it with butter. It's better that way.
Go bananas.
About the Book: The Ingredients of Us
Love doesn’t come with a recipe
From debut author Jennifer Gold comes a delicious novel about the sweet and sour ingredients of life and love
Elle, an accomplished baker, has a recipe for every event in her life. But when she discovers her husband’s infidelity, she doesn’t know what to make of it. Jam, maybe? Definitely jam.
Fed up with the stale crumbs of her marriage, Elle revisits past recipes and the events that inspired them. A recipe for scones reminds her of her father’s death, cinnamon rolls signify the problematic courtship with her husband, and a batch of chocolate cookies casts Elle in a less-than-flattering light. Looking back, Elle soon realizes that some ingredients were missing all along.
After confronting her husband, Elle indulges her sweet tooth in other ways, including a rebound that just leaves her more confused. As secrets from the past collide with the conflicts of the present, Elle struggles to manage her bakery business and maintain the relationships most important to her. In piecing her life back together, will Elle learn to take the bitter with the sweet?