I love the Blog Probably This. Its adorable food-and-wine-loving creators, Beau and Matt, have great style and great recipes. Inspired by their “Best Banana Bread” but without a key ingredient (Madeira wine??? Not something we typically stock in our bar.) and unwilling to use another (not a fan of canola oil, sorry) but rich in overripe bananas, I decided to try coming up with my own version.

Now for tasting guinea pigs…or guinea girls. My day job is Creative Director/Writer for a woman-owned ad agency in New York. I love the work and everyone I get to work with, so given the sophisticated palates in the place, this was potentially a bit risky. Why ruin a good thing? But I can honestly say it was an office full of thumbs up…diet or no diet, juice cleanse or no juice cleanse. So next time you look at a bunch of bananas that have seen better days, I hope you’ll give this recipe a try!

INGREDIENTS:

Organic Bananas, 3 large ripe ones, do NOT peel, plus (optional) one to slice lengthwise for garnish (I needed the rest for my morning Smoothie!)

Organic All-Purpose Flour, 1 3/4 cups (if going Gluten-Free use Coconut Flour)

Organic Sugar, 1/2 cup (next time I will try 1/3)

Organic Brown Sugar, 1/2 cup (ditto)

Full Fat Yogurt (yes! fat can be good!!), 1 cup

Large Egg (just one)

Organic Butter (Kate’s is my all-time favorite), 1/2 cup melted plus 1 tablespoon for glaze

Vanilla Extract, 1 tsp

Sea Salt, 1/2 tsp

Baking Soda, 1/2 tsp

Baking Powder, 1/2 tsp

PLUS one secret ingredient…

Chia/Flaxseed mix, 1/4 cup (I was out of bran but would have included that too)

(I could not let the opportunity to sneak in something super healthy with all this decadent deliciousness pass by…)

Ingredients for Glaze: 1 /8 cup finest quality maple syrup, 1/8 cup finest quality rum, 1 tbsp finest quality butter. Are we sensing a trend? Set aside. And don’t drink the rum! Unless you are making this after wine o’clock.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place unpeeled bananas on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Once oven is ready, bake them for 25-30 minutes.

While they’re cooking…

Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together into a mixing bowl. Whisk in chia and flaxseeds.

Prep sugars (measure and mix in small bowl), yogurt and melted butter.

Remove baked bananas from oven (they will be dark brown to black) and let cool enough to be safely handled.

Peel the bananas over another mixing bowl. There will be liquid (banana juice?) along with the fruit. Since this was my first time “pre-baking” bananas I wasn’t sure what to do with this mystery liquid, so I poured most of it off. Wasn’t missed.

Mash coarsely with whisk.Whisk in sugars, yogurt, vanilla, egg and butter.Lastly, whisk in dry ingredients — just until blended, don’t overmix. Don’t the chia seeds mimic the “seeds” inside a banana?

Peel and slice a banana lengthwise. I used a sliver but next time…an entire half.

Line your loaf pan with parchment paper, then fill with mixed ingredients and place banana slice on top. This is a little tricky/messy. I folded paper origami-like to match pan but cutting the side seams might have been easier. Will try that next time.

Into the oven for 1 hour (or longer) until a toothpick comes out of the center without any batter on it. Crumbs are a good sign it’s done!

While the bread is cooling, make the glaze.

Simply combine maple syrup, rum and butter in a small saucepan and melt over low heat, whisking until throughly blended. Then turn up to medium/high and let bubble up just a bit. Set aside and let this cool until warm. You may need to whisk again before glazing.

Poke holes into top of bread with a toothpick, then brush on glaze. The holes will let it seep into the bread (yum!). I kept coating until glaze was gone.

Remove from pan, place on platter and slice, then watch it disappear. Warning…do NOT do this alone.

Hope you and yours like this recipe as much as I (and mine) do. Cheers!

All photos by MP Allegaert on iPhone 6.