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
Chelsea Sugar | Recipes
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)
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)
Simply Recipes: Banana Bread
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
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
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a loaf pan with butter or olive oil.
- Mash the bananas in a large mixing bowl until smooth.
- Mix the wet ingredients: Add the egg, milk, melted butter (or olive oil), and maple syrup to the mashed bananas. Stir until well combined.
- Combine the dry ingredients: In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
- 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.
- Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan and spread it evenly.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
- 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.