Recipe from AI for Banana Bread

Do you ever find sad-looking bananas in your fruit bowl? I did, and when I discovered a ripe, shrivelled banana surrounded by kiwifruit in a fruit bowl, I decided to make banana bread with the ingredients we had at home following the recipe of ChatGPT.

If you want to see the recipe right away, jump to here [Cooking with ChatGPT recipe].

Common Banana Bread Ingredients

First, I searched for the recipe under Uncle Google.

Ingredients

125 g butter, softened
½ cup Chelsea Caster Sugar (113g)
½ cup Chelsea Soft Brown Sugar (100g)
2 eggs
2 cups Edmonds Standard Grade Flour (300g)
1 tsp Edmonds Baking Powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp Edmonds Baking Soda
1 cup Meadow Fresh Original Milk (250ml)
2 ripe bananas, mashed
¼ cup walnuts, chopped (25g) (optional)

Chelsea Sugar | Recipes

Ingredients

2 to 3 medium (7‘ to 7-7/8’ long) very ripe bananas, peeled (about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups mashed)
1/3 cup (76g) butter, unsalted or salted, melted
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (not baking powder)
1 pinch salt
3/4 cup (150g) sugar (1/2 cup if you would like it less sweet, 1 cup if more sweet)
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (205g) all-purpose flour

Simply Recipes: Banana Bread

Interestingly, baking soda is often used instead of baking powder. Some recipes clearly state, ‘No baking powder’.
The only difference I could tell was that baking soda can also be used for cleaning, so I enlisted the help of Uncle Google again.

He found the article “What’s the Difference Between Baking Soda and Baking Powder?” for me.

I sort of understood the difference, but the problem is that we only have baking powder in our house. I wasn’t confident whether it would taste good to substitute it with baking powder. At this point, I was getting tedious opening a lot of websites and reading recipes.

Our Last Resort, ChatGPT

I’ll have to ask the Great Teacher ChatGPT for the last resort.
So, I typed down the ingredients I could use at home and asked ChatGPT to generate a recipe.

Forgive my strange English, but cheekily, I asked ChatGPT which recipe was being adopted. I was a bit hard on him, even though I had no choice but to rely on it, saying things like, ‘It’s not appropriate to combine contents from many different recipes because quantity is important in baking’. But I have to trust him anyway.
Now, finally, it’s time to start baking.

Cooking with ChatGPT recipe

Ingredients

• 2 ripe bananas
• 1 cup (120g) plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup (100g) sugar
• 1/4 cup (60ml) milk
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup (60g) melted butter or olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup (optional, for added sweetness)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a loaf pan with butter or olive oil.
2. Mash the bananas in a large mixing bowl until smooth.
3. Mix the wet ingredients: Add the egg, milk, melted butter (or olive oil), and maple syrup to the mashed bananas. Stir until well combined.
4. Combine the dry ingredients: In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
5. Combine wet and dry ingredients: Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined. Be careful not to overmix, as this can make the bread dense.
6. Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan and spread it evenly.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
8. Cool: Let the banana bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely.

Review

For someone who is not very good at baking like myself, it turned out well, even though we didn’t have a proper container!
My partner, who has a sweet tooth, is munching it. It’s a great success.

However, knowing the amount of sugar I put in scared me and need to stop him from absorbing half a cup of sugar.
It’s better to reduce the amount of sugar next time because it had enough sweetness, so I checked with the Great Teacher ChatGPT.

Next time, I would like to use half the original amount of sugar as it’s written.

Overall, ChatGPT is very useful, and I will continue to ask it to help me with my baking, which I am not very good at.