How to not bake banana bread!

Hallo meine Lieben,

I enjoy baking. A lot. But most times it doesn't turn out that great. Normally I don't know why. This time I know why. And it was not because I burned it. Are you surprised, Vanisha?

First I have to tell you that David always takes a banana to work to eat it for breakfast. He doesn't like to eat them anymore when they get brown and a little soft. So at that point I have to use them for baking. That's the reason I burned so many muffins in the last couple of weeks. 

So yesterday I decided that I was a little tired of baking muffins and that I wanted to make banana bread instead. I remembered a vegan recipe I found in my first vegan cook book that I bought when I was 13 or 14. So I googled "vegan banana bread" and found a recipe that sounded similar to the one I tried years ago.

There were only a couple of problems. I did not have all the ingredient but I thought it doesn't matter. Spoiler: It does matter. 

The recipe asked for a package of baking powder. In Germany you get baking powder in little packages but here I only have a huge box of baking powder. I have no idea how much is in a little package of baking powder but I though 3 teaspoons would be awesome. Maybe my first mistake. I don't know.

Second mistake. Recipe asked for nuts. Didn't have any so decided that they are not so important. They probably are. 

Recipe wants freshly ground vanilla. I only have some liquid vanilla stuff but the last muffins I made tasted a little bitter so I decided not to use any vanilla. Third mistake. 

Recipe also tells me that I need to add 120 ml of soy milk. Well, what a surprise. I am out of soy milk. I guess the fourth and biggest mistake was to use plant oil instead of soy milk. Both are fluids, right? I used a little more than 120 ml because the dough had a weird consistency. Huge mistake. 

Fifth mistake. Recipe wants me to add 3 bananas. I had 5 left that I needed to use for something so I though "more banana, more taste". Not true.

I should have been suspicious when I looked at it after 50 minutes of baking and it still looked like raw dough. 

The banana bread smelled awesome when I took it out of the oven and I did not burn it which was a huge success. So I was pretty confident that I made some pretty impressive banana bread here. 

So later I asked David if he wanted some banana bread for dessert (I was too full for dessert which was weird because "süss geht immer"). He said yes and I cut off a piece for him. Everything looked fine, like banana bread should look like. 
David started to eat and I asked him how it tastes and he said "good". David is a man of few words so I thought it must be good because he knows that he can tell me the truth about my cooking skills. 

A minute later he asked me if I want to try a bite and I agreed. I should have known it back then. I tried a tiny bite and I was shocked. It tasted terrible. And I mean really terrible. Not just a little bitter like the last muffins I made. I have never cooked or baked anything that horrible. I swear.

So what do we learn?

When you bake, please follow the recipe. It exists for a reason.

Have a wonderful Friday!