Fluffy Banana Bread

My mom passed this recipe on to me--it was one of the "My Best Recipe" entrants in the Honolulu Advertiser back when it was still the Honolulu Advertiser. I wish there was a date on it but I am willing to be it was the late 80s. As I mentioned in a previous banana bread post, Layla loves bananas so we always have lots of them, in different stages of ripeness, in the house. Between her and the turtles they usually get consumed before they get squishy. Either she slowed down her banana-eating rate or Gramma over-calculated because four of them reached the "even the turtles aren't going to eat that" point. Time for banana bread.

Here's the cast--the butter isn't in the photo because it was already getting nice and soft in a bowl.

I doubled the recipe since I assumed, by looking at the ingredient amounts, the recipe only yielded one loaf. I wanted one to taste and one to give away. I ran out of regular granulated sugar so I ended up using some of the vanilla sugar I made a while ago. In case anyone is concerned about the black flecks in the sugar above.

The recipe didn't say whether I should be using a mixer but since it was early in the morning, I decided to do it by hand.

Eggs are added and beaten in one at a time.

The vanilla was supposed to be added during the creaming process but I forgot. Double vanilla flavor with the sugar!

The dry ingredients are added a little at a time, alternating with the sour cream and mashed bananas. So, some dry ingredients...

Half of the sour cream...

Half of the mashed bananas (I used two large bananas, plus a bit more from a third banana). I repeated the alternating and ended with the dry ingredients.

I wasn't going to add nuts because the loaf to give away was going to the very nice fellow who took care of the moisture that accumulated in our walls from the pesky leaky window. I didn't know if he was allergic to nuts. I decided to chance it. I also decided to leave the pecans chunky.

I greased two glass loaf pans and divided the batter between them. Into the oven at 350F for an hour.

I thought it was interesting that they split on top like a classic Madeira cake. The smell was great. I left them in the pans for about 10 minutes then tipped them onto the rack to cool completely.

I believe we have addressed the fact that you should let bread cool completely before slicing. It was cool-ish. I liked having the big chunks of pecan in there. The bread was not as banana-y as I expected and it was also not very sweet, which I liked. The family definitely enjoyed it and the fragrance as it baked was so enticing. I would like to play with this recipe in terms of adjusting the amount of banana and seeing how it is without any nuts. Now if we can just get the resident monkey to give it a try...

Here's the recipe:

Fluffy Banana Bread

Carolyn Carvalho

Ingredients:

1/2 c. butter, softened

1 c. sugar

 2 eggs 

1 tsp. vanilla

1-1/2 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 c. mashed bananas

1/2 c. sour cream

1/2 c. chopped nuts

Directions:

1. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl. Add eggs one at a time and beat until fluffy.
2. Sift dry ingredients and add alternating with the sour cream and bananas. End with the dry ingredients and add nuts.
3. Bake at 350F for 1 hour.