Old Fashioned Banana Bread

While thumbing through one of my Mom’s old cookbooks, I ran across an old recipe for Banana Bread that was submitted by one her close friends so many years ago.  And since I was blessed with three overripe bananas that had made the trip from Indiana with our son’s family, I decided to turn on the oven and start baking!

BANANA BREAD   (Preheat oven to 350 degrees)

1/2 C. shortening or butter, softened
1 C. sugar
2 eggs
3 crushed bananas (the riper the better!)
2 C. flour
1 tsp.baking soda
1/4 C. chopped nuts (omit if you want to)

And you know me…I always “tinker” with recipes, so I also added
a pinch of salt
a drizzle of pure vanilla extract

Cream the butter and sugar.  Add the bananas and the eggs and mix well.  Add the vanilla.  Stir all dry ingredients (except the nuts) together and combine.

COOKING TIP:
If adding nuts…Combine them with a small amount of flour and stir together.

My Mom always did that…and she told me this COOKING TIP:
By coating the nuts with a dusting of flour it helps to keep the nuts suspended in the batter, instead of sinking to the bottom of the pan.  (Try it!  It works!)

Then fold the flour-coated nuts into the batter with a rubber spatula and pour into one large bread pan or two smaller ones.

So…instead of throwing those three sad bananas away, I now have two loaves of banana bread to serve at our next tailgate party!  (FYI….banana bread freezes really well.)

Like our grandmas used to say…Waste not, want not!