BAMFnana Bread

Anyone can cook. All you need is some kind of heating implement and creativity. Oh, and the Joy of Cooking. The Joy of Cooking is my all-time favorite cook book. Whether you own the most recent edition, in all of its modern glory, or the edition that tells you how to skin a squirrel, this cookbook is great. My edition tells me how to cook an octopus ("make sure first that your victim is dead -- by striking it a conclusive blow on the head."), and make a Birthday Bread Horse. Really, how can you go wrong?

Which brings me to banana bread. I felt a burning desire last Friday to bake banana bread. So I did. I used the Joy of Cooking 1975 edition recipe, which can be found on page 624 for "Quick Banana Bread," then used the ingredients I had on hand. This recipe calls for shortening, which I rarely cook with, so I used butter instead. This, along with using 2 eggs made for a delicious, cake-like banana bread. In a failed attempt to keep myself from eating all of the banana bread over the weekend, I put it in a ziploc bag and froze it. This just made the banana bread even more delicious and tempting. It lasted until Monday night.

BAMFnana Bread - Joy of Cooking 1975 edition and Janney

Preheat oven to 350

Mix (it said sift, but I couldn't find the sieve in my house. Nothing bad happened.)

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Blend until creamy:

1/3 cup butter

2/3 cup sugar

Beat in:

2 eggs

1 1/4 cups ripe banana pulp

Add dry ingredients in about 3 parts to the sugar mixture. Beat the batter after each addition until smooth.

Mix in: 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Place batter in a greased bread pan. Bake the bread for about 1 hour (I actually baked it for more like 1 hour and 15 minutes because I forgot about it, but it was still good, just slightly blackened on the sides). Cool before devouring (or for bonus points freeze it and eat it frozen).

I'm sure there are ways you could make it healthier. I want to experiment using olive oil instead of butter, applesauce instead of butter, egg whites, whole wheat flour, etc. But sometimes a girl's just got to have butter, white flour, cane sugar, and egg yolks.