Judge, Jury, and Devourer

A Madman's Guide to Banana Flavored Treats

[judgebanana]

To Butter or Not to Butter

Thanks for the submission, @virfujiwara! I FEEL SO BAD THAT YOU’VE NEVER HAD BANANA BREAD. My goodness where do I start?

I know!  Let’s have a small history lesson on this lovely loaf of lavish luxury. 

 Before the age of refrigeration, bananas were not common in the US.  They were hard to transport due to how quickly they ripened and eventually rotted.  When the 20th century began, this problem was solved by refrigeration, and bananas soon became a staple for breakfasts, desserts, and snacks.

When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, families were unwilling to throw away even the most minute of foodstuffs, even soon-to-be-rotten bananas.  Combine this with the advent of widely available baking powder and baking soda, courtesy of Royal and other such manufacturers, and you have the two main factors for the banana’s rise to stardom.  There was now an easy and effective use for overripe bananas, and soon banana bread became a ubiquitous meal for families across the US and most cookbooks had a recipe for it.

The main ingredients for a banana bread are mashed bananas (not sliced), a chemical leavener (baking powder/soda), a sweetener, fat, and flour.  But the common recipes for banana bread have changed with the times.  Since the Depression, banana bread has gone from a rough, bulky bread (due to using a cup wheat bran), to adding nuts and reducing fat, sugar, and banana (for some reason), to a nearly dessert level of delicious decadence with chocolate chips, cinnamon, nutmeg, and the moist texture of a cake but the firmness of a bread.

This blurred line between dessert loaf and traditional bread loaf has caused some discrepancies as to whether or not banana bread should be buttered.  I personally don’t butter my banana bread because I prefer sweeter, more moist loafs, but I know plenty of people who do.

So, on to the review! I will be basing this one off of my friend Megan’s banana bread that I ate many many many times over the course of the last 2 years.  She usually flavored it with the usual modern suspects - chocolate chips, cinnamon, nutmeg - and alternated between baking it normally or gluten free. I could never tell the difference.  

Biting into it, I was greeted by the taste of bountiful bananas baked into a boon of bread.  Sweet, but not overpowering, complimented lightly by chocolate and accented by the added spices.  It was moist and lovely, not requiring anything to wash it down.  And because of it’s banana-based construction, I never felt guilty for eating nearly half a loaf in one sitting. Although I probably should have. But oh well, I turned out fine.  Banana bread can tend to be a tad greasy or oily feeling depending on how much fat is added in addition to the mashed banana (which can be used to substitute for butter in gluten free baking) which detracts from the overall experience, but not too much.

8/10 

As banana flavored treats go, banana bread is one of my favorites. I’m not nearly as fond of banana-nut bread as I am of regular banana bread, and the one time Megan tried making banana zucchini gluten free once, none of us liked it very much, sadly.

So there you have it. Banana bread, at its core, is a delicious way to use overripe bananas in a cheap and effective way that was designed to feed multiple people a filling and tasty meal. I hope that gives you an idea of what banana bread is like @virfujiwara, and I encourage you to try making it at home! It’s pretty simple, doesn’t require any complicated ingredients, and there is an infinite wealth of different recipes to suit your tastes or dietary preferences!  And if you’re not so keen on some of the steps, there are plenty of box mixes for banana bread that are pretty serviceable compared to recipes from scratch.

[judgebanana]

Submissions are Open!

If YOU have a banana something you’d like me to review, just shoot me a submission! 

[judgebanana]

My White Whale

I figured since I gave a baseline for “fake” banana flavor, I should also review my crème de la crème of Cavendish confection.

In 2012, I went on a scuba diving trip on the Cayman Islands.  For those of you who have never been to the Caribbean, one piece of food advice people will give you a lot of the time is to skip burgers because the beef they get on the islands isn’t very good.  This did not stop my family.  We decided to look for the best burger joint on Grand Cayman and give it a shot.  The Sunshine Grill was that burger joint, and man, that was a tasty burger. And it came with a side of french fries, sweet potato fries, onion rings, and fried jalapeños. By Jove was that an excellent meal.  The burger came with a huge steak knife driven right through it. Excellent presentation.

But enough of that, we’re here for bananas! After my glorious meal, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to eat again.  When the waiter came around with little ice cream cones, I was resigned to passing up the complimentary dessert.  Once the words “banana ice cream” passed through my ears and to the banana-based pleasure center in my brain, however, I immediately became ravenous for a taste.

It was perfect.  I’m not kidding. It was the simplest, most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.  It was smooth and creamy like ice cream should be, with no bits of ice or big air pockets.  The taste was perfectly banana.  It wasn’t vanilla with bits of banana, nor was it a smooth mix of banana purée and some other ice cream.  At least, that’s not what it tasted like. It tasted of pure, perfect, Cavendish banana, and since then I’ve not had such a banana based dessert so blatantly bowl me over.

The reason I consider this ice cream to be my white whale is because I’m not even sure it still exists.  I don’t know that I’ll ever have the chance to go back to the Cayman Islands, and even if I did, I have no way of knowing if their homemade banana ice cream still exists.  There are so many variables involved in me tasting this triumphant treat again that it almost depresses me sometimes.

Perfect, pure, and mythical.

10/10

[judgebanana]

“Fake” Banana Baseline

We all know this little one.  We found it among the pile of assorted candies we’d get from trick-or-treating as kids.  Would we ever buy it of our own volition? Probably not, outside of variety packs.

I wanted to start with this unremarkable little guy because it will serve as a metric for most banana flavored things, as “artificial banana flavor” is very commonly used and Laffy Taffy is one of the most pervasive vehicles for that flavor. It gives us some common ground palette-wise.

If you’ve ever eaten a banana flavored Laffy Taffy, you’ll know that your brain starts out with “Ooo, banana!” before the factory taste begins to settle in.  The flavor of fake-nana is a powerful and one dimensional flavor when compared to the bananas we commonly enjoy today. This is because mono cultures are fickle things.

What I refer to as artificial banana flavor is actually very accurate to the taste of Gros Michel bananas from Martinique, Jamaica, the most popular of banana varieties in the early 20th century. This is why your grandparents love those tiny, hard candy bananas so much (Runts, you know the ones).  Panama disease, a fungus based banana bane that had been wreaking havoc on banana boys since the 1800s, had a really good couple of a decades and by the 1960s it had nearly wiped out all traces of the Gros Michel banana.

The banana most of us know today is the Cavendish, more specifically the Grand Nain.  The Cavendish quickly replaced the Gros Michel after it was discovered to grow in the same soil unhindered by the deadly Panama fungus (although since 2008 there have been growing reports of Cavendish plants being hit by the fungus).  This variety of banana has a less powerful flavor than the Gros Michel, but it has an arguably more subtle and complicated flavored in comparison.  This is because of the compound isoamyl acetate, which is the primary ingredient of artificial banana flavor. Studies have shown that the flavor compounds of Gros Michel bananas contain a lot more isoamyl acetate than the Cavendish variety, hence why artificial banana only tastes somewhat similar to what we generally think of true banana flavor.

Whew! What a nice history lesson. Oh yeah, I have to rate the item I’m talking about.

Well, it’s Laffy Taffy so it’s hard to eat, gets stuck in your teeth, rips out dental work, and tires your jaw out. Plus it tastes of Gross Michaels.

3/10

Bonus Fact: Scratch and sniff banana stickers primarily smell of Gros Michel bananas, just in case you can’t pick up the weak scent of Laffy Taffy. If you can’t find banana scratch and sniff stickers, head to the children’s clothes section at Target. There’s a scratch and sniff banana shirt.

Cheers!

[judgebanana]

Greetings, citizens

Judge Banana here. This blog is dedicated to finding, consuming, and reviewing banana flavored treats. This includes deserts, candy, snacks, confections, and any other banana flavored things you can think of, including (sadly) banana soda.

I have been a connoisseur of banana flavored items for about 10 or so years now, so I’ve eaten a great many banana things.  And a great many bananas. So much potassium...

Anyway, it was suggested to me that I make a blog dedicated to the art of eating banana flavored things, that I may share my knowledge with the world.

Let’s roll!