Walnuts, spices and yogurt bring the flavor!
My husband, kids and I don’t like bananas. You can’t hide a chunk of banana from us. Put one single slice in a fruit salad, and we can taste it. One teaspoon of a banana in a smoothie is enough to put us off.
When Nana comes to visit, she always brings a bunch of bananas. We remind her not to put the bananas in a fruit bowl or with the avocados or tomatoes or near the bread because they’ll take on a funky banana flavor.
Nana loves bananas and likes a few slices with her breakfast or as a midday snack. She reminds us how nutritious bananas are – and we agree, but that doesn’t mean we’re eating them. Then she eats maybe two in the ginormous bunch and leaves them with us when she leaves town. We watch the darkening bananas and don’t like to see them going to waste. That becomes the impetus for us to whip up our family’s Best Ever Banana Nut Bread.
One dessert perfect for everyone!
Everyone loves Best Ever Banana Nut Bread – even banana banishers like us!
We started with our great Aunt Sallie’s recipe that goes back at least 90 years. But we can’t leave well enough alone and tweaked it. Hers just called for cinnamon. We like more spices. My thought is if you have spices in the cabinet, use them! And more is better! If you’re a cinnamon-only type of person, that’s OK too. Your bread will still taste great! We don’t normally have buttermilk in the fridge like Aunt Sallie did, but we do have sour cream and yogurt, so we substitute.
Our Best Ever Banana Nut Bread is perfect to pack in a tailgate, put on a beautiful cutting board for a get together. It’s such an easy, homemade dessert for a crowd. Slices are also great for a breakfast treat or in a lunchbox. You can even put slices on a cookie sheet, smear them with a little butter and toast them slightly. Then slather the warm slices with cream cheese.
This recipe is super easy – no mixer required. Just a fork, spoon and a big mixing bowl.Yet, shortbread goes back much further than Victorian times. It has been around since the 1100s, but because it was made with so much butter, shortbread was made only for special occasions. Mary, Queen of Scots propelled shortbread in the 1500s with her love of the dessert.
A few quick cooking notes: The butter needs to be at room temperature to blend easily with the sugar.
To toast nuts, place them on a cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 5-7 minutes. It’s an easy step and well worth the added flavor.
To grease a pan, take the wrapper off the stick of butter you just used, wipe the pan. Then add about 1T of flour into the pan and shake it all around. Dump out the excess flour. Now you have a greased and floured pan ready for the batter.And it’s important to let the finished dough chill in the fridge for a few hours or put it in the freezer for 45 minutes to get cold and firm before slicing the cookies.
Cranberry Pistachio Shortbread
Recipe Ingredients
1 c brown sugar
½ c (1 stick) butter (softened)
1 1/2 c ripe mashed bananas (usually 4 bananas)
½ c buttermilk, yogurt or sour cream
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
3/4 t salt
1 t almond extract
2 t vanilla extract
1 t cinnamon
¼ t each nutmeg, ground cloves spice, ground ginger
½ t pumpkin pie spice
2 c flour
1 c heaping chopped toasted nuts (walnuts or pecans)
Optional ingredients:
½ c chocolate chips (added at the end and stir into the batter)
Preparation Instructions
Mixing time – 15 minutes
Baking time – 50 min.
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mash the bananas in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add sugar and stir.
4. Then add the rest of the ingredients in order.
5. Pour into a greased and floured bread loaf pan.
6. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
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