Cooking with Food Storage: Banana Nut Bread

One of the things I like most about this time of year is all the wonderful quick breads you can make that taste yummy on these cool crisp mornings.  Today, I made a banana nut bread.  The best thing about this quick bread recipe is it lends itself really well to using all shelf stable ingredients!


Here are the ingredients:

• 3 bananas, mashed (I used 1 1/2 cups freezed dried bananas, reconstituted)
• 1/3 cup butter (You can used powdered butter or you can make your own butter. You can see how to make your own butter here. Of course, it tastes great with fresh butter from the store too!)
• 1 egg (If using powdered eggs, use 2 TBS.)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla (I make my own. It's easy! You can see how to make your own here.)
• 1 1/2 cups flour (I used all purpose whole wheat flour that I made myself. You can see how to make your own flour here.)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt

The first thing to do is mash the bananas.  I used 1 1/2 cups freezed dried bananas which  I had to reconstitute.  Here is a picture of mine standing in warm water.  They usually take about 5 minutes to reconstitute. 

When the bananas were ready, I whipped them a bit with a fork instead of mashing. Next, combine the bananas with the butter.  If you are going to use powdered butter, measure out 1/3 cup powdered butter and reconstitute using a bit less water than what is called for on the package. Add a bit of oil as well as you add the butter to the bananas.  The powdered butter will behave better in the recipe when you add some oil.  Add between 1/8 and 1/4 cup.  I don't measure, I just take the 1/4 cup measuring cup and fill it about half way.  Both olive and canola oil work well.

Next, add the egg, sugar and vanilla. If using powdered eggs, you can reconstitute them first, if you would like (sometimes I do and sometimes I don't).  Mix well. I whipped my batter with a fork.

Now, add the flour and baking soda.  The directions for this recipe said not to over-mix the flour, just stir until moistened.  For some reason, it never seems to work out that way for me.  I always end up over-mixing!  After looking at the batter, I decided to add some walnuts and 1tsp of banana flavoring.  Then I mixed again.

 

 

When ready, pour into a greased 9 x5 pan. I used Pam on mine.

 

 

 

 Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.  As an alternative, you could cook this bread in the Sun Oven or the Cardboard Box oven too. It will bake well in both.  Here is what mine looked like after taking it out of the oven.

Let it cool for 15 minutes in the pan, then run a knife around the edges and remove the bread from the pan.  Let it cool completely before adding glaze or sprinkling with powdered sugar.  I made a pumpkin bread along with this one and when they were cool, I sprinkled powdered sugar on both.

And there you have it!  A delicious quick bread made with all shelf stable ingredients!