cynthia’s banana bread

My grandmother is a reader, and I remember raiding her shelves during long summer afternoons at the lake house.  I also remember (and still experience!) her generosity with her reading: there were/are book-shaped packages at every birthday, Christmas, and sometimes in between.  But I think my greatest discovery was a book my Nana brought as her plane read on one visit sometime in the mid 1990s.  It was the first in Jan Karon’s Mitford series, At Home in Mitford.  I gobbled it up in a day or two and begged for more.  I adored that series (through book 5, at least)!  Looking back I must have been quite the picture: gawky teenager with terrible haircut reads voraciously about an overweight, 60-something priest in small town Carolina.  Those stories made me happy, though.

I hadn’t thought about Father Tim in years, but when I mailed myself all of the books that were under my parents’ stairs, I found a paperback set of the Mitford novels.  They’re on my shelf now, and up for discussion.  I wondered aloud at a recent party if a Mitford cookbook existed, because all I really remember at this remove are fantastic descriptions of food.  And upon checking the interwebs, my book club friends assured me that there was one.  I put it on hold, and dutifully picked it up at the library.  To be honest, I didn’t like the cookbook itself – it was badly organized.  HOWEVER.  This delicious banana bread recipe made the whole exercise worth it.  Oh my word, it’s good!  And in the land of funny coincidences, my Nana’s name is Cynthia.  So!  It’s Cynthia’s recipe, two times over.

Cynthia’s Banana Bread (modified slightly from Jan Karon’s Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader)

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

2 eggs, room temperature

1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt (2%)

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

3 large, ripe bananas, mashed with a fork

2 tablespoons lemon zest (see note)

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup walnuts, chopped

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Coat a 9” loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.

Place the sugar and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and cream until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add the yogurt, lemon juice, bananas and lemon zest and beat well.  Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl.  Add the dry ingredients to the banana mixture in two batches, and stir until just blended.  Add the walnuts and mix again until just incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top, and bake for 55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out fairly clean.  Don’t over bake!  Cool in the pan on a rack for 5 minutes, then invert onto the rack to cool completely.

Note: The Mitford Cookbook introduced instructions for zesting a lemon unlike any that I have ever tried.  Using a vegetable peeler, peel the colored part of the peel and leave the bitter white pith alone.  Once you have a small pile of lemon peels, mince and measure.  There’s your zest! Two tablespoons ended up being the zest of one large lemon when done in this manner.

This. Banana bread.  Happy Easter to ME!  I don’t ever recall wanting to eat banana bread batter by the spoonful before… but this recipe did it.  I won’t ever switch back to anything else, because, YEAH.  Holy yum.

Recommended for: everyone.  It’s delicious.

Interested in other food-related posts?  Check out Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking!

i was so wrong about that book!

The Book List is a short and fun meme that allows you to share books with the blogosphere and make a list. Who doesn't love lists (quiet, you!)? It is hosted weekly by Rebecca at Lost in Books.

This Week's Topic is: 3 books you thought you’d hate but ended up loving

1. To Have and to Hold by Mary Johnston

I mentioned that I was homeschooled in this post. As a part of that, my mom traveled to curriculum fairs and teaching seminars on a regular basis. Usually we’d dread her return, because she’d be all fired up with new strategies and so many new TEXTBOOKS! It was overwhelming, to say the least. One time, though, she returned with this title and insisted on reading it to us almost as soon as she’d unpacked. I was ready to hate it. Had already decided on it. But the adventure! The romance! The historical setting! The story caught my attention in spite of myself, and I’ve re-read it several times since.

2. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

For several years I lied to my swim lesson and swim team kids. That sounds really reprehensible, doesn’t it? What sort of role model was I? I, dear audience, was the girl who hadn’t read any Harry Potter, and didn’t want to. I didn't want to tell those kids that I hadn't read the books, either. I was determined to be the only person in my generation who hadn’t touched the series. I was sure they were badly written and not worth my time. Well, I was sure up until the night before I left for my second trip to Chile, when I realized I didn’t have any suitable books for the 10-hour plane ride. So I gave in and borrowed my roommate’s copies, and I ended up staying awake for hours to read them all. Suffice it to say…I was wrong.

3. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon

My grandmother has had an amazing effect on my reading taste. No, really. She lives in upstate New York, and whenever she visits or I go to visit, I somehow end up reading one of her books. It’s uncanny, really. I am always sure that I won’t like whatever it is, and I’m always sucked in. This probably means that we have very similar taste. I try not to shudder at that, even though it’s true. So I was pretty positive that I wouldn’t like reading about a middle-aged priest in a small Carolina town…but it turns out I was wrong. I gobbled up the entire Mitford series in a month or two. And some Nicholas Sparks, and some James Patterson…and you get the idea. Books I usually don’t review here, but read guiltily and then give away to my local thrift shop.

What are three books you ended up liking in spite of yourself?