Banana Bread - for my doll

I'm baking banana bread today.  I decided a long time ago (probably when I was hungry) that I'd like my kids to have me baking as part of their growing up experience.  I have a glass cake dome on my counter that I try to keep filled with some sort of baked situation.

While I was mixing up the batter, I started thinking about my girl.  How one day, when she has a kitchen of her own, I'd like her to have a starter set of recipes at her disposal.

So, over the course of time, I'm going to compile some those recipes here.

Starting with:

 Banana Bread
(Great Grandma Delores)

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter - softened (or melted if you want to hurry)
2 or 3 mashed bananas
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk (which we never have on hand so I sour skim milk with vinegar-just a drop)

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

Mix the first six ingredients in the order listed.  Make sure to cream the butter and sugar first.  I usually use a potato masher to smush up the bananas, and then just keep mashing all the other wet ingredients with that.

Next, you can dump the next 4 ingredients into a pile on top of the banana mixture.  Take a second to fluff the soda and powder into the flour (with your *clean-of-course* fingers) and then fold it all together.

I usually divide this between 2 bread pans, or use it all in one bundt pan, and before placing it in the oven, I top it with sugar.  (Raw is best, but regular cane will do just fine.)

Bake at 325 for 45 minutes to an hour.  (A knife inserted should come out clean when it's done.)


This is a nice basic banana bread recipe, but it also loves to be jazzed up.  You know how much your mother loves to jazz things up.  Coconut, walnuts, chocolate chips...by themselves or all together make it extra special.

xoxo