Banana Bread

I've often confessed here, and on instagram, reading makes me hungry.  What can say!  If food or a meal is an important element in the book I'm reading, I am usually up trying to find something to grab to satisfy my craving.  Often it means dinner plans are changing, or I am going to be pulling down a cookbook and stirring up something in the kitchen.  (This may be the reason I can sit down with a cookbook and read it like a novel.)  A  good book is always better with a beverage and a snack.  Do you agree?

In the novel The Lost for Words Bookshop, Loveday, is taken aback by a cookbook mysteriously delivered to the shop where she works.   While perusing the pages she feels there is something familiar about it and memories of her mother are stirred.  

My mother loved to cook.  There are so many aromas from the kitchen that take me back home and to my mother.  Banana Bread is one of my fondest memories.  No one else in my family particularly cared for banana bread.  I loved it!   It was a special treat, and something Mother made only for me.

This is not my mother's recipe.  I dearly wish it were; her recipe is in hiding somewhere, hopefully to be found.   I have tried several banana bread recipes, and nothing really made me happy.  With a few over-ripe bananas, more in the freezer and a sudden desire to experiment,  I mixed up a recipe that brings back those memories.  And, most importantly,....   it has my sweet Bonnie Rose's approval (wink wink).

To compliment The Lost for Words Bookshop  I am offering up

Bee's Banana Bread

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups flour, sifted
1 heaping tsp. baking soda
1/3 cup buttermilk
4-5 ripe bananas, mashed
(This is a lot of bananas, you may feel the need to decrease the amount.)

Pre-heat oven to 350℉.  Prepare two loaf pans.
Cream butter and add sugar.  Beat until smooth.  Add salt and eggs, one at a time, and mix until well blended.  Add flour and soda alternating with buttermilk.  Stir in bananas.  (I leave my bananas a little chunky.)    Pour mixture into pans and bake for about 45 mins.   Test the center with a toothpick before taking out of oven.  It should come out with no crumbs. 

This bread is moist, dense and tasty.

 Happy Reading
and
Enjoy!   

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I hope you like this idea I have of pairing a book with a beverage, food, meal, or perhaps an outing.  This, like everything I do, is an experiment and a work in progress.  Let me know your thoughts.

Hugs!