Bourbon Banana Bread

Say that three times fast. Then say it again after sipping out of the bottle of bourbon. Being the economical person that I am, I realized I could buy those little cutesy bottles of bourbon for this recipe and even then, I over-estimated. Oh darn, cutesy bottle of bourbon now lives in my spice cabinet. Seems legit.

The Noah's Ark of baking: the ingredients go together, two by two.

This recipe is from Joy the Baker (I can't find the recipe online but it's in her fabulous cookbook, go buy it), what a shock! I'm still new to the blogosphere so pretty much know of three blogs:

1. Joy the Baker
2. CupCait
3. HomeFries (an offshoot of Joy the Baker, listen to the podcast, it will change your life)

I'm not a fan of walnuts or nuts in cakes. Cakes should be spongy, not crunchy, so I ignored that bit but otherwise followed it right down to the chocolate chips and bourbon. I tried to make banana bread once before and got only as far as determining the bananas were rancid, not over ripe. And that reminds me I have a frozen banana in my freezer saved for banana bread (there's always money in the banana stand). So this was round one with the banana bread.

In process and yes, my rubber spatula says "Princess"

I must say this came out very well considering the eggs miiiight have been past their best by date (for once I actually broke the eggs in a separate bowl just in case). And I discovered that 45 seconds on half power is the perfect amount of time to soften butter because let's be real--I never remember to take it out ahead of time.

There's this myth that alcohol burns off when you cook it and I'm not entirely sure if that's true. I think in this case most of it did burn off (I have to add that because I gave it to a pregnant lady, she knew bourbon went into it) but I'd be interested to see if there's a MythBusters episode talking about this.

Completed product! And my wire shelf doubles as a cooling rack...right?

This post comes in double doses because as the bourbon banana bread baked (now say that three times fast) I also finally made pumpkin scones!