I Love Banana, Part Deux...Bread.

Part two of 'Banana Love' this week. I had the ripe bananas, they were WAY ready today to be baked into something tasty. I had a busy day though, had to finish the frosting for my Mom's cake for Mother's Day...and we had anniversary gifts to shop for, errands to run etc. So I knew whatever I made had to be good and fast. No stand mixer required.

I researched a little for a recipe. Of course almost every book and blog has a banana bread recipe. I wanted to use oil instead of butter, and I found a note online where someone raved about yogurt in a banana bread. So I assembled my own recipe..and decided to keep it pretty simple, with a few little fun additions like rum and pumpkin pie spice...and use both oil and yogurt instead of butter.



The result was a very moist, crumbly yet dense banana bread that we both loved. I may play around with it a little more, but this was a winner. My husband who never likes to 'eat dessert' before dinner (sacrilege!) gave me puppy dog eyes of 'pretty please' after I let him sample a piece with some lemon cream on top.

During my researching online I came across something that made me laugh, Not Quite Nigella's Banana Bread BakeOff, happening basically right now! I am not sure if it's past midnight AU time...but I figured I'd post this as my impromptu entry anyway for fun.

Nutty Banana Bread & Coconut Topping

2 bananas, overripe
1 tblsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/2c light brown sugar
1/4c granulated sugar
1 tblsp vanilla
1 tblsp rum
1/3c fat free plain yogurt
1/3c canola oil
1 egg, room temperature
1c all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
dash salt
nut topping or crushed walnuts
sweetenend coconut flakes
turbinado or sparkling sugar

Mash bananas with cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice in a bowl. Add rum and vanilla and let sit while you assemble the other ingredients. In another bowl, mix sugars, yogurt, oil, egg and mix to combine. In a third bowl, sift flour, soda, powder, salt. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, mix a few times to combine. Add banana/rum/vanilla/spice bowl and mix a few times to combine. Do not overmix.



Pour into prepped loaf pans (I used minis) and top with the nut topping or crushed walnuts, turbinado sugar sprinkles, and coconut (or mix and match!).

You can also do this with the one bowl method, I used one bowl for dry then put wet on top and then mixed in banana bowl last. Since it's a bread I feel like it's more forgiving than a cake or cupcake would be.



Bake at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean, my 2 mini pans took about 27-30 minutes, but a large loaf pan might be more like 40 minutes.



The result is a moist crumbly banana bread...love the nut topping, I feel like it's never really banana bread unless it has nuts. Slice and eat plain or combine with yummy fattening goodness like leftover lemon curd cream from a Mother's Day cake..mmmm. See top picture of amazingness.

Update: The NQN contest has been posted and judged...unfortunately my little entry didn't get any love..I guess I should have posted the link on here in hopes my faithful readers would vote for me but oh well! It was fun just to enter!!

And for anyone looking for a banana bread recipe...this is all you will ever need to know. I bookmarked this page and will be baking some of these yummy entries the next chance I get!