Blind Taste Tests

For whatever reason, my mom over the years has been very interested in blind taste tests of similar products.   One of the products is usually a no name, discount store brand verses top brands.   This has also flowed into recipes.   We are known to make two versions of the same item just to see which recipe is better.   Why do I bring this up you ask?   Well in the past two days, we've had TWO... count them TWO, blind taste tests.  

This is not usually this frequent of an occurrence for us.   However, my mom bought Eckrich bologna for sandwiches yesterday and had a small portion of Aldi's bologna in the fridge as well.    She and my dad tasted both of them side by side.   My mom of course knowing which one was which, but my dad had no idea.   Believe it or not, Aldi's bologna came out the winner.   It had more garlic according to mom.  

So the second taste test was banana bread recipes.   My mom has an old passed down recipe in her "box of recipes" that is a really good recipe.   However, it would have required me to go downstairs and find it.  Additionally it calls for cake flour in the recipe which we make ourselves (mixing flour and corn starch... not actually grinding flour), so it meant more sifting and mixing.   Neither of which I was up for.   So I opted to take to the web and found a pretty good looking Betty Crocker recipe.   Unfortunately, the recipe I found required buttermilk, which I do not regularly have on hand.   My husband stopped at Aldi's on his lunch break yesterday to get me the buttermilk and found out they don't sell it.  

After discussing with my mother, she volunteered to make the cake flour for me.  (Yay!  Thanks mom!)   Additionally, we needed the bologna (Eckrich, noted above) to go with our dinner, homemade turkey soup and sandwiches.   So when mom headed off to the store, she got me buttermilk as well.   (Again, thanks mom!  What a great woman!)  Then she asked which recipe I was going to make.    Since I had 5 very ripe bananas, I told her I'd make both.   And so I did.  

The Betty Crocker recipe definitely "looks" better.   The bread is all risen and nicely browned with the little cracks in the middle.  It also calls for an extra 1/2 cup of bananas, so I thought it would taste better.  I thought for sure we had found a winner.   The other recipe is much flatter and much darker in color.   I tasted them both today and there is definitely a difference.   The recipe that was passed down to me from my great aunt tastes delicious!!  Much better than the Betty Crocker one.  So there you go... don't let the looks deceive you.   We'll have to get a family consensus later this evening.   I'll let you know the results tomorrow.  

I do have to mention one more thing.   When I gave my oldest son a BC piece this morning, he said "why didn't you make grandma's recipe".   Since I made it late last night, there was no way for him to know which recipe it was.    I asked how he knew it wasn't grandma's recipe.  He just said "it tastes different".   Hmmm.... I guess we'll see.

Here's a pic of my two breads: