Recipe: Banana Bread

Banana bread is a great recipe for using those slightly over ripe bananas sitting on the counter. It would be a shame to waste them by throwing them out, when you can have a wonderful treat by making some banana bread instead.

*hint: If you don't have over ripe bananas on hand, but want to make banana bread anyway, go to your local grocery store and purchase the bananas that are a day or two old. They usually come in a bag and are not sold in the usual bunches. There is no point in purchasing fresh bananas, paying a little more for them, when what you need are the ones that have already started to ripen.

Banana bread just happens to be one of my specialties. I make several loaves about one or two months before Thanksgiving and Christmas, freeze them and then take them out when the holidays have arrived.

As well as being a nice snack for holiday guests, a loaf of banana bread also makes a lovely gift for neighbors or as a last minute gift idea for people who were not exactly on your gift list. I'm always sure to have a few extra loaves tucked in the freezer for this very purpose.

A good idea for wrapping a banana loaf AS a gift, is to wrap it neatly in tin foil, shortly after coming out of the oven and just before freezing. This way it helps to lock in the freshness. Then when you need to use it as a gift, you can take it from the freezer, a few hours prior. It's already wrapped (in the tin foil), so all you need to do is tie some pretty Christmas or gift ribbon around the loaf. By the time your recipient is about to cut into it, it should be thawed within plenty of time.

My recipe for Banana Bread is:

1 ½ cups of unbleached flour
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¼ cup raisins (optional)
¼ cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1 cup mashed fully ripe bananas

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan.

In one bowl, mix the dry ingredients (the flower, baking powder, salt).

In another bowl, cream the shortening, then gradually add the sugar and blend to a paste-like consistency. Add the eggs and beat until fluffy. Now add the previously mashed bananas.

Next, add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet mixture in 3 parts, blending well between adding each part. Once your mixture is well blended, pour into pan and bake for 60 to 70 minutes, until the tops are golden brown and the bread is slightly pulling away from the pan.

This recipe will make one banana loaf. If you happen to have a lot of ripe bananas, or need more than one loaf for the holidays, double, triple or quadruple the recipe.

I find it just makes good sense not to heat up the oven to bake just one loaf, so try to make more than one at a time. If you don't need the extra loaves, freeze them for special occasions.

Enjoy!