Banana Coffee Cake (Beth Hensperger)

Banana coffee cakes are rare. This one is sugary crunchy on the surface, like a sugar cookie, and melting tender inside, like a pound cake. Good warm or warmed up. Keeps well at room temperature, , covered, 3-5 days at the very least.

Do not refrigerate.

Banana Bread (Beth Hensperger, Bread Bible)

Banana-Walnut Bread from Beth Hensperger's Bread Bible. 

I like Beth Hensperger's recipes, for they never disappoint, although I admit I am rarely successful with them right away. This stunning bread is also insanely delicious, off the charts good. My newbie mistake was that I ignored Beth's advice to butter and flour the bread pan before filling it with batter. I thought I could skip that step, because my pan was non-stick... So my banana bread was ruined when I tried to take it out of pan, half of it stuck to the bottom of the pan, and ... oh well. It was still delicious. 

Just like her other banana bread from the Bread Machine book, this one becomes incredibly better after several hours in the fridge. It is quite good when hot or warm, but it really shines after at least 12 hrs of refrigeration. Amazing, amazing quality. Moist, tender and fiercely fragrant, better than any other variation of banana bread of this type I have tried before. Really. It is so good, it is worth buying bananas especially for it, and baking double batches because everyone in the family will have a second and a third helping of it. 

I like my banana breads dark brown in color of their crumb, even when they are without sour cream or chocolate in the recipe. So I used whole wheat flour instead of regular all-purpose flour in the example that I show. To make it even darker, switch to dark brown sugar by weight. For those, who don't use cup measurements, I give equivalents in grams.