Monday, July 6, 2009

Best Banana Bread, ever!

We've been making this banana bread for several years and LOVE it! The original recipe was from a book of recipes that were contributed by all the people that worked for Norwest Investments & Trust back in 1996. I doctored it up and made a couple of changes to make it our own and it is delicious and moist.


Banana Bread

1 cup milk
2 tbsp vinegar (white is preferable, but otherwise cider is ok)
1 cup oil
2 1/2 cups flour
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup mashed bananas (or approximately 2 brown bananas)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (or if you are using the black coated pans, preheat to 325-335 degrees).
Add 2 tbsp vinegar to milk and set aside. Mix the remaining ingredients, except the baking soda, together in a mixer. Add the baking soda to the milk mixture and stir well. Let rest for a minute or two. Gradually add the milk mixture to the flour mixture with your mixer on low.
Divide the batter between two loaf pans that have been sprayed with the non-stick baking spray. (I love the size of the IKEA loaf pans, long and narrow).
Bake for 55-60 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pan for 5 minutes and then remove from the pan and continue cooling on a wire rack, or just dig right in a start eating!

hint: what to do with the last brown (or sometime black) banana that is left from the bunch? peel it and put it in a ziploc sandwich bag in the freezer. I'll usually free 2 or 3 bananas together, depending on their size, adding bananas to the bag as they turn brown. Then, when I want to bake banana bread, I've got mashed bananas all ready to go in the freezer. You can thaw them in the microwave or just let them sit on the counter for an hour.

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