banana bread

I am seriously addicted to it right now. Here's my favorite recipe.

1 cup of butter, softened
2 cups of sugar
4 eggs
3 cups of all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
3 bananas
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts, if you have them

Cream the butter, sugar, and eggs. Mix dry ingredients separately, then add to butter mixture. Add sour cream, vanilla, and bananas. Stir in nuts. Pour into two greased loaf pans and bake at 350 for 1 hour.


Now, ignore all that. Because! It has way too much fat and sugar! Yikes! It's yummy, believe me, but wow...I feel like I might as well give the kids a snicker bar for breakfast. Here's my tweaked version...not as sweet, but still very, very good and something that I can feed my kids without a guilt complex. Henry loves it!

1/2 cup of butter
1 cup of sugar
4 eggs
3 cups of whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
3 bananas
1/2 cup of applesauce
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts, if you have them

Add applesauce with the bananas. I rarely use all whole wheat flour when baking. It comes out like a doorstop. But it actually works really well in this recipe. The kids had no idea it was whole wheat. I tried it accidentally when I was in the middle of baking some and found out I was out of white flour.

You did know that you can freeze bananas whole, right in their skins, right? I buy them in those paper bags at 25 cents a pound. We eat up what we can, then I toss the rest right in the freezer as is. When you are ready to use them, you just defrost them, then cut the stem end off with kitchen scissors and goosh the banana right into the bowl. They turn really dark but are still just fine for baking. And if you have any little boys around, they will love to make the bananas "poop". Yes...we are easily entertained.