Cook the Collection #4: The King Arthur Flour Cookbook

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Meghan

(Disclosure: The cookbook links below are affiliate links and if you happen to make a purchase through them I’ll receive a few cents of your purchase – and of course would be so grateful!)

I guess I needed to bake something else this week as a palate cleanser after those cupcakes and I had a bunch of bananas going seriously brown so I grabbed the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook down from the shelf and whipped up a loaf of their Banana Bread. The recipe header calls this banana bread one of the best they’ve tried, and it is really good. Its already my go-to banana bread recipe with the substitution of chocolate chips for walnuts, but I was feeling frisky this time and added toasted coconut and 68% cacao dark chocolate, and it was spectacular.

I also substituted honey Greek yogurt instead of plain yogurt and I think it made the bread a bit drier than usual, which makes sense because the Greek yogurt is thicker than the regular style. I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future because the drier texture actually works better as a bread and for toasting, while the regular moister texture is more cake-like. Besides just eating the banana bread as a snack, I sliced it into thick slices, toasted it under the broiler, then topped it with vanilla ice cream and drizzled caramel sauce over the top (this idea was courtesy of the cookbook, as well) and that was a hit with us and our dinner company.

This cookbook is another good general baking book, with lots of extra information about the ‘whys’ of baking as well as recipes from ranging from quick breads to yeasted breads to cakes, cookies, pies and pastries. This one does get some use in my kitchen and I’d recommend it for beginning to intermediate bakers.