Banana Nut Bread ✠

I generally don’t eat banana bread, but my wife Camilla does, if I make it. I clipped this recipe from a package of walnuts and made the banana bread it described. The wife loved it. So I am recording it here for future reference. Since I make it for her, I don’t have to substitute for or omit fat, sodium, and carbohydrates.

The occasion for making banana bread arises when we wind up, somehow, at the end of a week with some bananas past their prime. Black-skinned bananas are perfect for bread making because nature has converted most of the starch to sugar. It is at its sweetest when it has blackened.

We store our bananas in the refrigerator, despite the catchy Chiquita® Banana jingle from the 1940s advising that “you should never put bananas in the refrigerator.” We know that it is important, however, not to put them there before they have reached the level of ripeness that we want them to retain. Refrigerating an unripe banana inhibits it from ripening, even though it eventually turns black.

Scientific studies have shown that overripe bananas are packed with antioxidants and are not a health issue. Their unsightly appearance and mushy texture, however, deter most people from eating them in this form. But, iterating the above, they are perfect for bread making.

• ½ cup butter
• 1 cup <sugar>
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 tbsp milk
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped

Cream together the butter and <sugar> in a mixing bowl. Add the eggs and bananas. Use an electric mixer to blend the ingredients until the bananas are well mashed and the mixture is smooth.

Add the flour, baking soda, and milk. Bled thoroughly, but do not overmix. Fold in the nuts.

Divide the batter equally into two greased and floured loaf pans (8½” × 4½” × 2”). Bake in a 350°F oven for 45 minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and transfer the baked loaves to cooling racks.

Makes 2 loaves.