#11: Banana Oat Bread (oven or slow-cooker)

Banana-Oat Bread

Hi Tiffany,
I had a few bananas left that were getting mushy, and I needed to use them soon, so I made Banana Bread today.  Apparently you can bake in a crock pot!  Who would've known?  I got the idea from the crock pot lady.


Now, why would someone want to bake in a slow cooker, you might ask?  You might want to bake in your slow cooker if:
1) you don't have an oven
2) your oven is broken
3) your oven is already full of other goodies for holiday dinners
4) you don't want to stay near your kitchen while your appliances are at work
5) its too hot to run your oven.
6) you think slow cookers are the bomb.


#1 applies to me.  and #6.
Anyways...I adapted a recipe from cooks.com.  I wanted to try some with orange marmalade, but didn't have orange juice as most of those recipes call for, so I just added a little orange marmalade to this one, along with some chopped walnuts.  


The Basics:
Prep time: About 20 minutes, then 45-50 min. in the oven or about 4 hours in the slow cooker.
Good for leftovers: of course!
servings: about 10 slices
cost: less than $5. I didn't have to go to the store for this recipe.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup softened butter/margarine OR 1/2 cup shortening OR about 6 tablespoons of vegetable oil.  But Butter will taste Better.
3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed, plus extra for sprinkling on top
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 to 3 medium very ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/3 cup old-fashioned oatmeal, uncooked, plus extra for sprinkling
2 tablespoons orange marmalade
1/3 cup chopped (but still chunky) walnuts, almonds, or pecans (optional)


The Process:
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees OR get out your slow cooker.  Grease a bread pan.  If you are using the slow cooker method and don't have a bread pan that will fit inside your slow cooker, you can either use a different pan or just grease your slow-cooker and cook directly inside it, but the cook time will be less (about 2 hours)
Mash your bananas- I sliced mine in a bowl before mashing them with a fork until they were super mushy.  Mix all wet ingredients (eggs, bananas, orange marmalade, milk, and butter/shortening/oil.  Gradually stir in the dry ingredients a little bit at a time.  If you have a mixer, use it and it will be better stirred and won't take so long.  I don't have a mixer so I had to use my strong-woman-muscles to mix mine.
Spoon it all into your pan or crock pot.  Sprinkle a little oatmeal and brown sugar on top.  Cook in the oven for 45-50 minutes, or in the crockpot (pan method) for 4 hours on high, or 2 hours if you're cooking directly in the crock (don't open and check until its been at least 2 hours in the crockpot!).  It's done when a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Carefully remove the pan and let it cool 10-20 minutes before taking the bread out of the pan.


Its not super sweet, but pretty yummy.  It would have tasted better with real butter, but I didn't have any so I used margarine and vegetable oil instead.  I think I like my mom's banana bread even more, so I will try to find out what recipe she's using and hopefully get that up here as well.  


Notes:

With your Crock Pot: According to Stephanie the Crock pot lady, you're supposed to use something to prop the lid up a little to let the steam out when using a pan inside the crock.  She (and I) used a chopstick.  Others have suggested placing a stack of paper towels over the pan before putting the lid on, but I used the chopstick method and mine turned out fine.