going bananas

i know what you're thinking...why on earth is she showing us her ugly black bananas? well, i can tell you that around here, we buy bananas in order to let them get like this. and once they get like this, we rejoice, because it means it's time to make my grandma goot's banana bread. grandma goot was my name for her - when i was little, i mispronounced her name, which was in fact, gert (short for gertrude) and it just stuck. grandma goot was a baker of the highest caliber. at christmas, she'd make dozens of cakes and cookies of different kinds - all absolutely beautiful and perfect. but my favorite recipe of hers is her banana bread (which husband argues is a cake). i argue that it's a bread so i can bake it in a loaf pan and slather it with butter before eating it, but he's right, it is a rather cake-like bread. next time you've let your bananas go, you've just got to try it.

grandma goot's banana bread

1/2 C butter

1 C sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 C flour (to make it "healthy," i often use half spelt flour and half ordinary)

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/3 C buttermilk (plain milk totally ok if you don't have buttermilk)

3 (or 4 if they're small) mashed bananas

1/3 C walnuts (optional)

1 large milk chocolate bar, smashed into bits (or chocolate chips if you live where they have those) (optional)

cream together the sugar and butter, add the eggs one by one once it's creamy. combine your flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and pour half in, then add the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour. lastly, add the bananas. because i use my kitchenaid, i don't bother to pre-mash them, i just whack (as jamie oliver would say) them in in chunks, but if you don't have a stand mixer, you might want to pre-mash. nuts and chocolate pieces are optional. at our house, because of a certain 9-year-old, we leave out the nuts, but add the chocolate. i should add that the chocolate was the 9-year-old's idea in the first place, but it goes beautifully with the bananainess of the cake.  pour into a buttered/floured bread tin (or two - we always make a small loaf for the neighbors) and bake at 175°C/350°F for 40-50 minutes (when a toothpick poked into the center comes out clean).

it's delicious piping hot out of the pan with a steaming mug of tea, but it also makes a great breakfast. even marilyn thinks so...