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!

banana nut brownies

I became a banana-and-coffee-for-breakfast person last summer.  Before that I was just a coffee-for-breakfast girl.  Times change!  Anyway, now that I buy bananas, I also have bananas going brown before I can get to them.  I knew of one way to use those bananas: banana bread.  Last weekend I looked around the internet for a new recipe, but for some reason I kept thinking of chocolate.  Eventually, chocolate took complete control (as it does).  And that is how I discovered these brownies, which are ridiculously good.  Like, wow.

Banana Nut Brownies (modified very slightly from this Taste of Home recipe) 

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup butter, very soft

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup ripe bananas, mashed (around 3 medium-sized)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a 9-inch square baking pan and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine butter, sugar and cocoa.  Stir in eggs, milk and vanilla. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add flour mixture to batter in two batches, stirring after each addition.  Stir in bananas, then fold in nuts and chocolate chips.

Pour batter into the prepared baking pan, and bake 40-45 minutes until the top springs back/stays firm when tapped lightly.  Cool in pan before serving (or be very careful of the chocolate chips, which will have turned liquid and extremely hot). 

This recipe makes a lovely pan of brownies, and although they are rich, they also have that hint of ‘lightness’ that the fruit brings to the table.  I took photos and then told my roommates they were free game.  The brownies were gone by the following morning.

Recommended for: fans of brownies, anyone with overripe bananas and a chocolate craving, and for an easy, family-friendly dessert to end any meal.

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