Black Tea Banana Bread

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club, I had the pleasure of being assigned Ros’ blog, The More Than Occasional Baker. Now, this is my kind of blog! I have a major sweet tooth and prefer baking over cooking. Unfortunately, this made it extremely difficult to choose which recipe I wanted to make since everything looked good to me.

I was choosing between Pineapple TartsEarl Grey Tea CookiesBananas Foster Crepe CakeGinger & Chocolate Oat CookiesPistachio, Yogurt, and Elderflower CakeNo-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel BitesHomemade Vanilla MarshmallowsMadelinesWhite Chocolate & Macadamia Cookies, and Earl Grey Tea Banana Bread.

In the end, I went with whatever recipe I had the most ingredients for. I didn’t have any more Earl Grey tea on hand since we used it all up making Lavender Earl Grey Truffles for Christmas a while ago, but thankfully my friend Stephanie had just gifted me with a whole box of Thai Black Tea that I swapped in.

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To continue the Thai-tea theme, I drizzled some thinned out condensed milk on top. The cake was quite dense, which I think was a result of the containers I baked them in (I had this issue with some zucchini bread I baked in these containers) as well as the fact that I just mashed the bananas instead of mushing them to a pulp and substituted yogurt for the sour cream. I also used some of the wet tea leaves to use in the bread itself since I liked the color and texture contrast.

Check out the other Secret Recipe Clubbers below, or head on over to The More Than Occasional Baker to see what she’s whipped up recently!

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Milk Punch

Milk Punch

Somewhere between egg nog and coquito, this drink is one of my favorites to have during the winter season. Even though it is served cold, the spices are very warming.

This version is upgraded a little bit with the addition of a premium liqueur called Banane du Brésil by Giffard. I first tasted it at Repeal Day Ball 2013 and was lucky enough to receive it as a Christmas present from my fiancé. He had to travel all over the DC area since this liqueur is no longer distributed in the area. Thankfully he was able to find one bottle, tucked away in a forgotten dusty corner at Ace Beverage. When combined with Wild Turkey 14 Year Bourbon, it tastes like a bit like a grown up liquified bananas foster.