I love making banana bread. But I love eating it even more. Everybody makes theirs a little different, but this time I made mine very different… didn’t change a single ingredient… I just changed the physical part of HOW it was made. Because I had help! Becca loved getting to mash the bananas, loved dumping the ingredients into the bowls and stirring, and she loved watching the mixer beater go around and around and around! This time we also added in some additional math – because we doubled the recipe. So we mashed our bananas, measured them, and then saw that we had enough bananas for a double recipe. So I had Becca help me add the whole numbers together to figure out how many scoops of each item we would need. Baking is always such a fun and easy way to sneak a math lesson in!
Here’s our recipe:
Banana Bread
2 1/4 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp Kosher salt
3/4 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
3/4 tsp vanilla
dash or two of cinnamon
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (the riper, the better – ours were black)
Stir together in a medium bowl – flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
Combine shortening, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, eggs, and bananas in large mixer bowl, and beat until thoroughly blended.
Add flour mixture, a little at a time, until all is completely mixed.
Place in two greased loaf pans (or I use the 4 mini muffin stoneware pan from Pampered Chef) at 350F for 30-35 mins or until a toothpick comes out clear when placed in the center of the loaf.
Cool and store in an airtight container.
Note – if you’d like to add nuts, pecans or walnuts work great with this recipe. I just poke them down into the top of the loaves that I chose to add nuts to so that anyone can easily tell that the loaf has nuts and can avoid if they have allergies.
Butterbees and Bumbleflies 