Photo: Farideh Sadeghin
The VICE staff's personally vetted recommendations to help us all survive the very strange time that is coronavirus quarantine.
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- It's incredibly easy, like, an eight-year-old could make it.
- It comes from Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, who is an absolute cooking and baking goddess and everything she makes is so good I can't believe so many of her recipes are available for free on her blog.
- The chocolate swirl, which is absolutely crucial for people who want to die face-first in a tub of Phish Food, like me.
- MOIST! MOIST MOIST MOIST. If you hate that word, I'm sorry, but there is not a better word for that wonderful squishy doughiness that a perfect banana bread makes.
- If you're like me, you're constantly overestimating your own/need affinity for bananas, buying too many, and then watching them brown and rot on your kitchen counter before your very eyes like an existential Chia pet. Here's the perfect way to use them up before you have to perform the depressing task of admitting to yourself that they've become inedible, realizing that your home is now infested with fruit flies, and throwing them in the garbage.
- Virtually impossible to fuck up. I have made it 20+ times the proper way, but also many janky ways, including with freezer-burned bananas that I carelessly froze in a probably non-airtight container and exhumed and stuck in the batter like they were a Neanderthal man discovered frostbitten on a Nepalese mountaintop and brought into a laboratory. I also once used gluten-free flour instead of all-purpose, because that was all I had, and it still came out pretty good!
- You can share it with people and they will absolutely adore it and beg for the recipe, and you can tell them that it was actually concocted by an extremely popular food blogger and is hosted on VICE's very popular food website, but mentally they will still refer to it as "your" banana bread—"OMG, Hilary brought her banana bread, it's the best!" And you will feel slightly guilty but also like you're an amazing baker.
- Look how lovely the swirl is before you bake it: