When life hands you bananas,…

With four bananas on hand, starting to get those streaks in the peel that say “ripe and ready”, and with the prospects of an afternoon in which hanging around home is the agenda, well – banana nut bread!!!

There’s just something warm and comforting about banana nut bread, not to mention that it’s easy to make, a quite healthy mix of ingredients, and can make its way through your day – buttered and toasted for breakfast, with cream cheese at mid-day, and maybe with a scoop of chocolate or vanilla (or both) ice cream for dessert at dinner. It’s as adaptable as they come. Thick sliced or thin sliced, it all works.

Some years ago I expressed a desire for a recipe that yielded a loaf as soft and moist as you’d really want. Funny, isn’t it, that the recipe that filled the bill came from someone who despises the word ‘moist’! Life’s ironies.

For ease, I’ll put the recipe below, but you can also find it, with some helpful notes, here. Have a go at it; it’s comfort food, for sure.

BANANA NUT BREAD

INGREDIENTS

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
2-3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS

Preheat your oven to 325° F. Grease a 9″ x 5″ x 3″ loaf pan.
In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
In another mixing bowl, combine the eggs, mashed bananas, oil, buttermilk, and vanilla.
Add the ‘wet’ ingredients to the flour mixture, stirring until just combined.
Fold in the walnuts.
Pour the batter into the loaf pan, and give it a shake to level it up.
Bake in your 325° oven for one hour and 20 minutes.
Allow to cool before slicing.

A couple of hints.

A pastry cutter or potato masher does a great job on getting the bananas to the consistency you want.

Once you have the bananas mashed, and have added the eggs, oil, buttermilk, and vanilla, a minute or two whisking with help smooth out the mixture.

You can use pecans in place of walnuts; they work just as well.