HCB - Many-Splendored Quick Bread

This week's challenge for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was extra special. Not only did I make this week's Many-Splendored Quick Bread, I got to bake it with Marie, in her kitchen. Cool huh?! It was a lot of fun and Marie is just as funny in person as she is in her posts.

Left to right: Jim, Marie, and Woody

Jim is such a nice guy. He was switching between taking picture for Marie and myself, and at the same time, trying to stay out of our way :o) Woody (you can find his picture on page xii), also joined us, just as we were about to put our loaves into the oven. I very much enjoyed his stories about working with Rose. What a lucky guy he is!! You can find Marie's description of this bread and more pictures of our "bake-event" on Marie's blog.

Splendid indeed!

This quick bread intrigued me. I've had banana bread before, carrot bread and zucchini bread. But I've never had a quick bread that combined all three elements. I was very curious how that would taste.



The batter comes together very quickly. It's oil-based which is already at room temperature. Since I didn't have Muscovado sugar, I used brown sugar; dark brown sugar, that is. I just love the flavor of dark brown sugar which its deeper caramel undertones, compared to its lighter counterpart. Walnuts are a no-no for me due to allergies so I simply omitted them.

Instead of baking one big loaf, I baked 3 mini loaves. This makes it easy to give a loaf away or to freeze it. Smaller loaves also require less baking time, so after a mere 35 minutes, I got this:

Three beautiful mini loaves

After a 10 minute rest on the cooling rack, I inverted the breads out of their pans and let them cool. Not long after that, Marie's loaf was done baking. While the loaves were finishing their cooling process, we enjoyed a Lemon Cake I had brought with me as well as a cake Woody baked that morning. Unfortunately, I can't show you a picture of Woody's cake because it's top-secret (really!).

A slice of my Lemon Cake for everybody (Woody later had another piece - yay!)

Once we finished eating those cakes, we thought we had waited long enough :o) We cut a few slices from Marie's loaf as well as one of mine.

Doesn't that look pretty?

Bon appetit!

And to show you how much we had baking and chatting together, I decided to share this picture with you :o)

Woody sneaking up behind Marie while she's getting ready to show us her loaf :o)

Final thoughts/tips:

• This bread has a wonderful banana flavor that shines through. It's soft and moist, without being "wet". I couldn't taste the carrot or the zucchini, so I'm thinking their job was to lend moistness to the bread, as well as give the bread those beautiful colors.
• Hubby loved this bread. He said it was soft and moist, and gave it a 9.5 out of 10. Yes!
• Next time I make this (and there will be a next time!), I would add some spices. My favorite spices for these types of breads are: cinnamon, nutmeg, and a dash of cloves. Another thought is to substitute toasted almonds for the walnuts. Lastly, I think orange zest pairs really well with carrots, so that could be another variation.