Banana Nut Bread

“While Lee helped him Adam said, ‘I had a dream—very real. I dreamed about my father.’”

Inspiration

My father always said he didn’t care for sweets, but loved to eat them! His favorite dessert was banana nut bread. He adored bananas. My dad grew up in the “drought and depression” (that was his description). For his family sweets were something to dream about. He found bananas to be exotic and sweet and he liked them. I have tried many banana nut bread recipes, but this one is the best. The recipe was shared with my daughter by a friend who enjoys baking. Her friend loves to get up early in the morning and start baking at 5am. I am so impressed! Her family has used this recipe for several generations. She adds chocolate chips to her banana nut bread. I like to add orange zest to my bread.

Essentials

Ripe bananas are the essential to obtaining the sweet tropical essence of the banana in your bread and aroma in your kitchen. A ripe banana will be rich yellow in color with brown spots. Thoroughly mash the banana prior to adding to the dry ingredients. Mix the dry and wet ingredients by hand as so not to over mix the batter. No kitchen equipment to put away!

1. Preheat oven 350°
2. Prepare pan: Grease and flour loaf pan, set aside.
3. Dry ingredients: Into a medium size mixing bowl sift or shake through a large sieve flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices, set aside.
4. Wet ingredients: In a medium size bowl (this bowl should be large enough to mix the all the recipe ingredients), mix together melted, cooled butter (or canola oil), eggs, milk and vanilla (add orange zest, if you are using). Stir in sugar, set aside. In a third, smaller bowl thoroughly mash bananas. There should be no big visible lumps of fruit. I use a fork, but a blender will certainly work. Add the mashed bananas to the bowl with the wet ingredients by folding the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Do not over mix. Fold in walnuts (and chocolate chips if you are using).
5. Baking: Pour batter into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. When done, cake tester will come out clean and the bread will have pulled away from the sides of the pan and be a tawny golden brown. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Release the bread from the pan, by running a kitchen knife around the edge of the bread. Then invert the bread onto a cooling rack or breadboard to finish cooling.
6. To serve: Slice cooled bread into desired thickness. The bread is good with honey or cream cheese and may be toasted.