Banana pound cake

I love to bake. My first baking experience must be shared. 

When we arrived in Germany, I discovered some frozen ripe bananas in the freezer. They had become too ripe and Josh froze them to use later to make banana bread. I think he secretly was hoping that I would make it. I have been tempted to bake some banana bread, but I didn't have any of my baking things, and no recipe. My mom emailed me the recipe over the weekend, and yesterday I decided to attempt to make some banana bread. I use the word attempt (which isn't my usual word of choice when it comes to baking) because I felt there were a lot of factors working against me. German stoves/ovens are much smaller than those in the US. When I came to visit Josh in April I had made a casserole in the oven and it took double the usual time to cook. I assume it's from the oven being so small and a lack of heat circulation... or something... I'm sure my middle school science teacher Mr. Litz could explain it in depth (or my dad could)... but I don't really care to know the real details. The oven is also electric, and I had been spoiled in my house baking with a gas oven. VERY spoiled. I was also going to be mixing/measuring everything with Josh's meager kitchen supplies instead of my own. So I was going to be baking in a smaller, electric oven... with none of my usual gizmos and gadgets that I love.

I measured out margarine and sugar putting them together in a bowl... and then looked around for something to mix it with. My options were a plastic serving spoon, and a whisk. Clearly, I wasn't thinking ahead. I chose the whisk. For those of you who are thinking I made the right choice, you have never had to clean margarine out of the wires of a whisk. The mixing wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be... it was keeping the whisk clear enough to effectively mix that was a challenge. When I thought of my KitchenAid mixer in a box, in a shipping container somewhere between Montana and here... it made me sad. I have never used frozen bananas for bread, or for anything for that matter. I really wasn't sure what the proper procedure was for handling frozen bananas. Do you let them thaw? Or do you somehow chop them up when they're frozen? Will the banana be the same? It made sense to me to set the bananas out to thaw before trying to mash them/add them to the batter. However, defrosted ripe bananas turn out to be much softer than a regular ripe banana. The runny, gooey, oozing mess that came out of the still frozen peel was defrosted/liquified banana... I think. It smelled like banana, but it certainly didn't look like banana. I have never dealt with banana in a liquid state before. I was kind of at a loss... and just added it to the batter hoping that it would turn out. I was quite pleased with myself when I finished mixing up the bread. This pleasure quickly ended when I realized I didn't have a bread pan... and Josh owns nothing kitchen wise, so I had to dig around to find something to use. Again... my choices for something to bake my bread in was a soup pot, or a casserole dish. I chose the casserole dish. With my banana bread recipe, the bread is suppose to bake for 45 minutes. After an hour, the top and corners of the bread were steadily growing darker, and the inside of the bread was still gooey. I would check on it in 10 minute increments, and the only thing that seemed to baking was the already burnt top. After the bread had been in the oven for about an hour and 45 minutes, I deemed that it was finally done... or... as good as it was ever going to get. I was trying to convince myself that the bread would probably still look okay if I trimmed off the burnt parts on top. As I walked into the kitchen to do that, I discovered that Josh had already eaten the burnt parts... and taken a chunk of the bread with him into the living room. I tried a piece. It was good... although denser than usual. Somehow my banana bread turned into banana pound cake. It turned out better than I thought it would. However. I can not wait for my stuff to get here. And there will be no more frozen bananas.