Banana Bread

Aside from using packaged mixes, this was my first time making 'real' banana bread and I can't believe how easy and fabulous it was. Never again will I buy the pre-made mixes. This took no time at all to prepare and was so moist and flavorful. I had purchased a few too many bananas in my quest to find out what was giving Jesse digestive issues (turns out it was chocolate milk!), and they were browning faster than we could eat them. I figured I'd look around for a good banana bread recipe, and, as always, I started with Taste of Home. I didn't have to go any further. This recipe had great reviews, and the ingredients were all things I had on hand (save for the walnuts, I did have to buy those). This calls for buttermilk, but I used regular whole milk. Mainly because I didn't have buttermilk, but also because I thought buttermilk didn't make much sense. Also, the original recipe says to bake this for 1 hour 20 minutes...yeeeeah, that was a wee bit too long for me. I checked on it when it still had 12 minutes left, and it was DEFINITELY done. In my instructions here, I'm only putting down an hour as the bake time. If you still need more, then you can add a few more minutes. My stove is pretty run-of-the-mill, so 80 minutes was just much too long. Well, hope you give this a try cause it was definitely tasty! Have a great weekend, and I'll see ya tomorrow!

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'Banana Bread'

Source: Taste of Home

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1-1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

2 medium ripe bananas, mashed (1 cup)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk (or regular milk)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 375. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, combine the eggs, bananas, oil, buttermilk and vanilla; add to flour mixture, stirring just until combined. Fold in nuts.

Pour into a greased 9 × 5 loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

***If using mini loaf pans, bake for only 40 minutes***