Whole Wheat Banana Bread

Holiday baking at The Frog & PenguINN has included several varieties of Grenville’s chocolate chip cookies, and a couple batches of banana-blueberry yogurt muffins. And, this week, our kitchen has been filled with the aroma of homemade banana bread as several loaves baked in the oven. Not only is this bread SO easy to make, there’s lots of variations possible with added ingredients as I found when doing an online recipe search. It’s GREAT with a cup of morning coffee (afternoon or evening too) OR a glass of cold milk; hot chocolate goes well too.

The recipe below is from the King Arthur whole wheat flour bag. We visited the King Arthur Baking Education Center in Norwich, VT this year. This place is a baker’s (and shopper’s)delight featuring a retail store, baking education center, and state-of-the-art bakery where you can watch bakers at work. There’s also a large eat-in café with sweet treats for sale (sorry, no free samples).

Whole Wheat Banana Bread

You do NOT have to mix the two flours, and can use only white flour if you prefer. This version may be a bit healthier, at least it would be nice to think so, don’t you think?.

• 2 C very ripe bananas, mashed
• ½ C vegetable oil
• 1 C sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 TBSP milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 C King Arthur whole wheat flour
• 1 C King Arthur unbleached all-purpose white flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ C chopped walnuts OR pecans
  TOPPING
• 2 TBSP  sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9x5-inch loaf pan OR spray the bottom with cooking spray.

1. In a large bowl, mash the bananas. Add oil, sugar, eggs, milk, and vanilla and stir to combine.
2. Mix in the flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt and chopped nuts. Scrape bottom and sides of the bowl to thoroughly combine ingredients. (NOTE: Be careful not to over mix.)
3. Transfer batter into prepared pan. Mix together sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the batter.
4. Bake in preheated oven for about 60 minutes, until a tester inserted in center comes out clean.
5. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then tip out of the pan, transfer to a rack to cool. (NOTE: Bread could be hard to remove if left sitting in pan too long.)

ADD-INS – include WITH the bananas (or not):

• 1/2 C plain (or vanilla) yogurt or 1/2 C sour cream (not both)
• 1 C chocolate chips
• 1/2 C baking cocoa
• 1/2 - 3/4 C blueberries (coating in flour helps prevent them from sinking in batter) ENJOY — if you are in the neighborhood stop in for a piece.
  Drop-in friends always welcome; back door ones are the best.