Banana Nut Bread minus the Nuts

Truthfully, I come from a family of GREAT cooks.  Very seldom have I eaten at a family member’s house where I’ve turned my nose up at something they made, unless it was just something I hate, ie ham and beans, liver, fish, etc.  Sorry, sometimes there are things I just don’t like, as do we all :).

Hubs and I have been creating our “Favorite’s” list between his family and mine, as to what of something is just the go-to recipe.  I mean sometimes they come from family, like my Grandma S’s Corn Casserole, or his mom’s cookie recipe!! and other times our faves come from PW, such as her Cinnamon Rolls (haven’t found any that I like better!) or cookbooks or my favorite biscuit recipe came from a blog.

We’re trying to figure out how/where to compile our favorite recipes so that we’ll always know where they are when we need/want them.

But then we have recipes that we’ve tried this and that of and still haven’t found “The fave”, such as banana bread.  A few weeks ago he and I were both craving it.  Well we didn’t have a banana one in our house, so the next time we went to the store, we picked up a couple.  Finally I had to come up with a recipe.  So Friday night my bananas had finally ripened.

My grandma always told me, the browner they get, the better they are for Banana Bread, but had I waited much longer, I think they’d have been bad.

So I went into my millions of cookbooks and started looking through recipes.  It seemed like every one of them called for milk, which we didn’t have.  Then I grabbed my family cookbook.  I always remember my Great Grandma having the BEST banana bread, and so I was hoping her recipe would be in the cookbook, sadly it wasn’t, but my Great Aunt D had one in there and I lucked out, it didn’t call for milk.  Now it called for Wheat Flour, which I didn’t have so I just subbed All-Purpose and called it good.

I’ll tell you, this recipe might be a contender for the fave list!  Although a cooking mishap… I forgot to add Baking Soda b/c I didn’t see it in the recipe until after the bread was out of the oven.  Oh well it was still awesome!

Banana Nut Bread via my Great Aunt

3/4 Cup cooking oil
2 cups brown sugar
2 ripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla or maple flavoring
1 tsp baking powder
1 pkg cream cheese
2 eggs, beaten
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp soda
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1/2 pkg raisins (optional)
1/2 pkg dried cranberries (optional)
1/2 pkg chopped dates (optional)

Mix well  

3/4 cup oil

2 cups brown sugar

2 Ripe Bananas

1 tsp Vanilla or Maple Flavoring.  I went with my homemade vanilla.

1 tsp Baking Powder; and pretend 1/2 tsp Baking soda 🙂

1 8oz pkg Cream Cheese

2 Beaten Eggs

3 Cups Whole Wheat Flour, or All purpose, whatever 🙂

Now mix in nuts, raisins, cranberries &/or dates as per your own taste.  I left all the above out 🙂

Mix Well

and pour into bread pans, 1/2 full.

Bake at 360F (that’s what the recipe said, I wondered if it wasn’t supposed to be 350 but I put it to 360…) oven until toothpick comes out clean, approx. 45 minutes.

Sprinkle dry powdered sugar on top when hot.  Cool and slice.

Yes, I think someone is happy 🙂

We forgot to dust it with powdered sugar.  We were just to darn excited to have banana bread.