A few days after the movers came, I had a 2 bananas left over from making banana pudding, so I decided to make banana bread, but I wanted to have “add-ins” too. I looked up on the internet different banana bread recipes and tweaked several in order to make my own!
Here’s what I did:
Cream together 1/4 cup of room temperature butter and 1 cup of sugar. This is easiest with a hand mixer, but if you don’t have one (I don’t have one currently…the movers took it.) you can soften the butter in the microwave a little, then add it to the sugar and just kind of “fold in” the sugar until it looks close to what it would look like with a mixer.
Once it’s creamed, add in 2 eggs, 1 cup of mashed bananas, 1/4 cup of milk, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.
After it’s all mixed, pour in 2 cups of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Then, stir in about 1 1/2 cups of cranberries (I used a bag of cherry-flavored craisins) and a 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts (I don’t know how much I put in mine-I just dumped the rest of my bag in without chopping!)
Pour the dough into a greased 9×5 loaf pan and bake at 350*F (175*C) for about 1 hour and 15 minutes or til it passes the toothpick test.
Let the loaf cool IN the pan for about 15 minutes after you pull it from the oven, then let it cool the rest of the way on a cookie rack. I don’t have a cookie rack right now, so I just put mine on a sheet of parchment paper on the cold counter.
We’ve been snacking on it for a few days now, but we finally cut it into slices for breakfast bread and Keith and I both realized that it looks a little like fruitcake! It tastes MUCH better though. 😉
Patti's Kitchen 