As bananas ripen to their prime squishiness ~ when they are barely yellow ~ but streaked with black and brown, even solid black, that’s the time to make banana bread.
My 1972 edition is still going strong, still used today.
The strange thing is I like the flavor of bananas, but the mushy texture grosses me out. That’s when banana bread enters the scene.
This is a great simple recipe for the bread. I adapted the original a touch by adding vanilla extract and scattering nuts over the top before baking, instead of combing them with the batter.
If you prefer, add ½ cup of chopped nuts and ¼ cup finely chopped apricots to the batter, and then a sprinkling of turbinado sugar over the top of the loaf before baking.
Add the sifted ingredients in about 3 parts to the sugar mixture. Beat the batter after each addition until smooth. Place batter in a greased 9 x 5 x 3 inches loaf pan. Scatter ½ cup chopped walnuts over top. Bake the bread until brown on top and done in the center (poke with a toothpick; it should come out clean) for 50 to 55 minutes. Let stand in pan for 10 minutes, turn out on wire rack. Cool completely before slicing.
3 cups flour 1 cup sugar 1 cup walnuts, rough chopped 1 tablespoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 egg, lightly beaten 1⅔ cup buttermilk 1 teaspoon vanilla ¼ cup vegetable oil
Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour an 8” x 4” loaf pan. In a large mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients through cinnamon. In another bowl, combine egg and remaining ingredients. Add wet ingredients to the flour mixture and stir just until moistened. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan. Bake 55 minutes to 1¼ hours, until a toothpick inserted in center is dry. Let stand for 10 minutes. Remove bread from pan and transfer bread to a wire rack to finish cooling. Cool completely before slicing.
Cornbread is a favorite of mine and I found this lightened
up version that’s delicious. I’m
not saying it’s better than the traditional cornbread, but it fills the bill
for a cornbread craving!
This cornbread is moist and fluffy with a bit of tang from
the buttermilk. It’s adapted from
a Cooking Light recipe; using stone-ground cornmeal to give it a great coarse
sandy texture. Simple, good and easy!
Southern-Style Cornbread
Lightened Up Ingredients: 1½ cups stone-ground cornmeal
3 tablespoons flour ¼ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder ¼ teaspoon baking soda 1 cup fat-free or low-fat buttermilk Egg substitute equivalent to 1 egg 1 tablespoon canola oil Method: Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Coat and 8-inch square baking pan with non-stick cooking
spray. Add cornmeal and flour to a large bowl. Whisk in salt, baking powder and baking soda. Make a well in the center. Combine buttermilk, egg substitute and oil in a small bowl
and mix thoroughly. Pour buttermilk mixture into well of dry ingredients and
combine, do not over-stir. Pour into prepared pan. Bake 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes
out clean. Cut into squares and serve warm. ENJOY!!!
Be sure to visit my friend, Linda’s blog, @My Kind of Cooking for
great tips and delicious easy recipes.
If you have over-ripe bananas over there on your kitchen
counter, this recipe, not the garbage can, is the way to go with them!
It’s great the way the zing of the lemon perks up the
sweetness of the bananas in this loaf of banana lemon bread. You get a mellow banana flavor when
using bananas that are too ripe for any other purpose. Just remember not to over-mix the
dough; mix it by hand, not an electric mixer.
Should you bake a loaf of this, you will
have a tasty quick bread that is good enough for breakfast, as a snack or dessert!
Homemade
Banana Lemon Bread
Ingredients:
½ cup butter, melted
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
¾ cup walnuts, chopped
2 medium bananas (1 cup), mashed
Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour a 9” x 5” loaf pan or 3 mini loaf pans.
In a large bowl, stir together the melted butter and sugar.
Add eggs and vanilla and beat well.
Combine flour, baking soda and salt.
Stir into the butter mixture until smooth.
Gently fold in sour cream, lemon zest, walnuts and bananas.
Spread evenly into the prepared pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes for large loaf pan or 25
minutes for mini loaves, or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out
clean.
Cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to
cool completely.
Makes 1 large loaf or 3 mini loaves
ENJOY!
Be sure to visit my friend, Linda’s blog, @My Kind of
Cooking for great tips and delicious easy
recipes!
This is truly about the best quick bread I have ever made,
and I’ve made a lot of them over the years. It was a huge hit for all of us!
I’m not sure what exactly makes it is such a delicious
bread: I always swore by Granny
Smith apples for baking, and usually included brown sugar and oil in the baked
goods. This recipe contains
Honeycrisp apples, white granulated sugar and butter; which is creamed with the
sugar. So ~ I’m not sure whether
just one of these items makes the difference, or if it’s the process of creaming,
or if it is all things combined.
Honeycrisp apples were developed in Minnesota and started
appearing in the markets in the early 1990’s. They are just as the name implies
~ crisp and sweet, but with a little tartness too, plus a pretty color. It has been my favorite eating apple
from the first bite, many years ago, and from now on, I will be using
Honeycrisp apples for baking too!
Honeycrisp Apple
Bread
Ingredients:
1 cup butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
4 Honeycrisp apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1 cup chopped walnuts, optional
Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Lightly grease two 8x4-inch loaf pans.
In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar until smooth and
creamy.
Beat in the eggs.
In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt
and cinnamon.
Mix into the butter mixture until moistened.
Fold in the apples.
Stir in the walnuts, if desired.
Transfer to the prepared pans.
Bake for about 1 hour in 350 degree oven, until a toothpick
inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool in the pans for 15 minutes before removing to a wire
rack to cool completely.
Makes 2 loaves
Mouthwatering delicious!
Be sure to visit my friend, Linda’s
blog, @My Kind of
Cooking for great tips and delicious easy recipes!
Crescent Dragonwagon is the creator of this recipe and The Cornbread Gospels. It’s a unique cookbook though with all types of recipes using cornmeal.
Before I go on with the recipe, I just want to thank Kat @sweetkatskitchen for the fantastic “Gooseberry Patch Baking Recipes Organizer" I won in her giveaway. It’s filled with many pockets for recipes and great tips are on each pocket also. Kat has an excellent blog chocked full of delicious baked goodies. She has had a busy holiday season ~ baking for her customers. And now, I finally have a way to organize all my newspaper and magazine recipe clippings! Thanks so much, Kat! Go check out Kat’s website, you’ll be glad you did!
Cornbread is a good thing that turns into a great thing when they’re sticks! It’s like a little miniature cornbread of your own! They take being baked in a corn stick pan ~ a heavy cast-iron mold shaped like tiny ears of corn. Corn sticks have a great crunchy texture because a larger surface area is exposed to both the direct air of the oven and the cast iron molds. If you favor REALLY crunchy corn sticks like we do, use stone-ground cornmeal for extra crunch. Like I’ve said before in several posts, I can not buy stone-ground cornmeal locally so purchase it from Nora Mill.
Probably, most any batter can be used for corn sticks. Since it is easy for the batter to stick to the pan, the trick is to grease the molds very liberally and place them into the oven until sizzling hot, almost smoking, before adding the batter. The corn sticks turn out a beautiful golden color!
These Cheddar-Scallion-Black Pepper Cornsticks are in Crescent Dragonwagon’s words, “jazzy enough to make you say ‘WOW’ with each bite!” You want a sharp Cheddar cheese. “The scallion-black pepper mix is better than it has any right to be,” Crescent is right!
Here’s Dragonwagon’s recipe:
Cheddar-Scallion-Black Pepper Cornsticks
Adapted
Ingredients:
1½ cups flour
1¼ cups stone-ground yellow cornmeal
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 to 1½ teaspoons coarse freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 cups (8 ounces) very finely grated extra-sharp Cheddar cheese
2 eggs
1½ cups buttermilk*
¼ cup (½ stick) butter, melted
3 scallions, chopped very, very fine
Vegetable oil cooking spray (Crisco)**
Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and black pepper in a large bow, stirring very well.
Remove 2 tablespoons of this mixture and toss it in a small bowl with the finely grated cheese. Set aside.
Beat eggs and buttermilk together in a medium bowl, then beat in the melted butter.
Stir this into the flour-cornmeal mix with just a few strokes-it shouldn’t be fully incorporated yet.
Sprinkle with the scallions and cheese and stir a few more times, just until combined.
Spray the corn stick pan very liberally with oil, and spoon the batter into the molds about three quarters of the way full.
Bake until the corn sticks are crusty and golden, 18 to 20 minutes.
Cool briefly in the pans, then turn out onto a rack to cool a little more.
Serve warm.
YUM!
Pam’s note: I used 1½ teaspoons pepper.
*The recipe calls for 1¼ cups buttermilk. It was a thick batter so I increased it to 1½ cups.
The recipe reads to fill the molds about three quarters of the way full. I did this at first and after baking a couple, realized they needed to be filled almost full.
**I liberally greased the pans with Crisco, (no cooking spray) heated them in the oven until very hot before adding batter and baking.
ENJOY!
Be sure to visit my friend, Linda’s blog @My Kind of Cooking for great tips, recipes and cookbook giveaway!
A fun thing is happening this morning! I will be joining Linda (“My Kind of Cooking”) on the radio, via telephone this morning during her cooking segment, “Fast Food Friday.”
You can listen over the internet by clicking this link: Passion Radio. Click on the Listen Live button in the upper left hand corner of the website to connect. We will be on around 8:20 a.m. mountain time, 9:20 central time.
As you may have seen on my June 25th post, I won her cookbook in a drawing. Linda mentioned my winning the cookbook on the radio program as I was listening. And then to my amazement, she emailed asking if I would like to join her on the air.
With that, I made two recipes and shipped the “goodies” to Linda in New Mexico. I had a hard time trying to decide upon what to make that would ship well in this heat.
The first recipe I made was Chocolate Chunk Butterscotch Blondies. It is a recipe that Mom made and I did some substituting. It originally called for walnuts, shredded coconut and milk chocolate chips. I bake it with pecans, butterscotch chips and semi-sweet chocolate chunks.
These blondies are about the brown sugar though. They are similar to a brownie but have a brown sugar base instead of cocoa like brownies. Blondies are a sweet thing!
Chocolate Chunk Butterscotch Blondies
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, at room temperature
3 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons vanilla
½ cup butterscotch morsels
½ cup semi-sweet dark chocolate chunks
½ cup pecans, chopped
Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease or spray an 8” baking dish with cooking spray.
In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
Beat butter and cream cheese in a large bowl with a mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy.
Add the brown sugar and beat 3-4 minutes longer.
Beat in the egg and vanilla.
Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined.
Fold in the butterscotch morsels, chocolate chunks and pecans.
Spread the batter in the baking dish and bake for about 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool about 15-20 minutes in the pan before slicing.
Makes about 16 bars
Yum!!!
Now, for the second ~ Hawaiian Pineapple Bread is a great sweet bread that a friend at our church in Louisville gave to me. I love pineapple and macadamia nuts so this fit the bill! It’s easy and a great moist bread.
I adored my grandmother, Maude! We lived on our farm outside of Columbus, Ohio until I was 11 and moved to Louisville, KY. In Pickerington, Ohio, Grandma and Grandpa lived on the farm across the road, just down a little ways from us. I was on my bike every day pedaling to her house to see what was going on. She never scolded me, was always kind and loving. I could do no wrong in her eyes and I loved her dearly and tried to live up to her expectations.
Grandma was a good seamstress, sewing a lot of my clothing when I was young. She loved her family and friends and also loved doing crossword puzzles, a slice of bread soaked in a glass of milk, reading scripture, watching the Ruth Lyons 50/50 Club every week-day on TV, peanut cluster candy, aprons, watching Midwestern Hayride on Saturday nights, playing the piano, clipping recipes, Pepsi Cola, doilies, the foods she canned, their big black cat, “Mugs,” and especially Elvis Presley. But, I’m sure, most of all, she loved giving all of her grandchildren a round of worm medicine each and every summer; she insisted upon it and to her credit, not one of us ever had worms!!!
Grandma was a short small lady who always seemed to have her apron on, whether she was in the kitchen or not. She was the mother of 7 kids and cooked for family and friends; actually, for anyone who showed up at the door. I’ve got many happy memories of her and the best ones are of just talking to her while she was cooking or baking. Grandma could cook some mean fried potatoes and I loved her cookies and this nutritious, delicious moist nut bread, which she baked every Thanksgiving.
Grandma’s Nut Bread
Ingredients:
2 well-beaten eggs
2 cups brown sugar
2 cups buttermilk
4 cups flour, sifted
½ t. salt
1 t. baking powder
2 t. baking soda
1 cup walnuts – whole
Method:
Beat eggs and sugar thoroughly with beater.
Add buttermilk, beat well.
Add sifted flour with salt, baking powder and soda. Stir well.
Stir in whole walnuts.
Pour into 9x5 loaf pans.
Let stand for 10 minutes before baking.
Shake out air bubbles.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes-1 hours, until toothpick comes out clean.
