Two Banana Breads

It was a race to the wire, but I finally managed to use up an entire bag of dented-and-dinged bananas. This coup was completed with these two banana breads. For the first one, I used a recipe from Lisa Yockelson's Baking by Flavor. This Banana-Cranberry Tea Bread has dried cranberries in a sour-cream enriched batter. I zested an orange into the batter, figuring that it would go pretty well with the cranberry flavor.

The second loaf is from Lora Brody's Basic Baking. For this loaf, I added the zest of a couple of limes and 1/4 cup of lime juice instead of the lemon zest and juice the original recipe called for, plus some toasted coconut. While I was relatively happy with how the recipe came together, but I was a little disappointed with the coarse texture of the top of the loaf. Also, although the recipe called for an 8x4 loaf pan, the batter was plenty enough for a 9x5 loaf pan. I'm glad I went with my gut instinct on that one, or I'd have been scraping up burned batter from the oven floor.

Both of these breads have been sliced and will go to this week's PLTI class.