Best Banana Bread Yet!

As this pregnancy progresses, I find I can no longer sleep in. I am lucky if I make it until 7am on a Saturday. So I find myself baking some kind of breakfast goodie while the hubs sleeps. This past weekend my friend came out to help paint the baby's room. With a 9am start time, I thought banana bread would be a good quick snack.

I had some frozen bananas to use and b/c I actually had the forethought to make banana bread, I pulled them out of the freezer the night before & put them in the fridge. Now, I have never used frozen bananas in my banana bread so I was a little bit skeptical.

I remembered, from years ago, that I had printed out a recipe for banana bread from Williams-Sonoma & that it contained buttermilk. So I went on a search & found this one. Now I didn't have any buttermilk in the house, but I knew there was some concoction you could use to make buttermilk at home. (Its 1 cup of milk & 1 Tbsp of white vinegar or lemon juice.

Banana Bread
Williams-Sonoma
Ingredients:
6 Tbs. (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, at room
temperature
1 cup sugar
2 or 3 very ripe bananas, coarsely mashed
(about 1 1/2 cups)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, pecans
or hazelnuts


Directions:
Preheat an oven to 350°F. Grease and lightly flour a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat together the butter and sugar on medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Add the bananas and eggs and beat until smooth. Add the buttermilk and beat just until combined.

In a bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, salt and nuts. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and beat just until combined. The batter should be slightly lumpy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. It should be no more than two-thirds full. Bake until the loaf is dark golden brown and dry to the touch and the edges pull away from the sides of the pan, 55 to 60 minutes. A toothpick inserted into the center should come out clean. Let the bread rest in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn the loaf out onto a wire rack and let cool completely. Cut into thick slices to serve. Makes one 9-by-5-inch loaf.

This was awesome & by far the best banana bread I have made. I ended up using the 2 frozen bananas and another almost too ripe one I had on the counter. I omitted the nuts this time around b/c sometimes, nuts are just too much! This will definitely be my "go-to" banana bread recipe from here on out. It took longer than 60 minutes, more like 75 minutes.