Classic Banana Bread

I think just about everyone has a recipe for banana bread, but even if you do you should give this one a try. It is just perfect: dense, banana-y, sweet but not overpowering, and packed with pecans. Also, it takes all of 15 minutes to mix everything together and presto you have a sweet treat to eat or give away.

As always this is a great way to use up blackened overripe bananas (which I usually toss in the freezer to preserve if I don't feel like making banana bread). I bake mine in a tube pan because I have never gotten around to buying a loaf pan. I am sure this would turn out just fine in a bread pan but it might take a little longer to bake.

Classic Banana Bread
1 3/4 cups Flour
1 1/2 cups Sugar
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Salt
2 Eggs
2 blackened (overripe) bananas mashed
1/2 cup Vegetable Oil
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon Buttermilk (you can easily substitute curdled regular milk by adding in a tablespoon or less of vinegar to plain milk)
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 cup Pecans chopped
In a bowl mix together dry ingredients and set aside. 

Dry ingredients

Combine mashed bananas, eggs, oil, vanilla, and buttermilk.

Wet ingredients

Add in the dry ingredients and mix until all is combined. Stir in the pecans.

Pour into a greased tube pan.

In the tube pan

Bake at 325 degrees for about 1 hour and 10 minutes checking on the hour to make sure it doesn't get overdone (bread is done when a knife inserted into the middle comes out mostly clean - with only a few sticky crumbs).

Final product

Coconut Banana Cake

There was a dinner party hosted by one of my partner's friends a few days ago and I thought this cake would be the perfect thing to bring. Its a little time consuming to make but well worth the effort. Everyone at the party seemed to enjoy the cake, I only had a few slices left to bring home. :)


Coconut Banana Cake
3/4 cups Butter
1 1/2 cups Sugar
2 Eggs
1 cup Mashed Bananas (about 2 bananas)
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/2 cup Buttermilk

2 cups Flour

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1/2 cup Walnuts
3/4 cup Coconut
Cream butter and sugar for two minutes until fluffy and less grainy in texture. Add in eggs and beat for another 2 minutes until mixture stiffens.

Whipped butter, eggs, and sugar

Add in bananas and vanilla and beat for another two minutes.

Batter after the bananas are in

Set aside. Combine dry ingredients below into another bowl. Mix dry ingredients alternately (one after the other) with buttermilk into the creamed mixture until well mixed. Then add in walnuts and coconut and mix in. Pour cake batter into a greased and floured 13x9 inch pan.

Cake batter

Bake in a preheated oven at 370 for about 30 minutes (check at 25 minutes to make sure you don't over bake). Cool cake then frost and serve.

Coconut Buttercream Frosting
1/2 cup Butter softened
3 cups Confectioners' Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/4 cup Cream of Coconut (sweetened)
1/2 cup or more Flaked Coconut (sweetened)
Cream together butter and sugar then add in the vanilla and cream of coconut and beat for about 2-3 minutes until mixture becomes smoother and airy. Spread over cooled cake and sprinkle with flaked coconut.

Creamy Fruit Salad

This fruit salad recipe is a tried and true favorite, as I have been making it since I was a teen. This time I made it for a Christmas brunch at my friend's house and it went over really well. The brunch was tons of fun and we ended up staying all day playing cards and scrabble, all in all, a very satisfying Christmas day.

The salad is really simple to make, doesn't take a lot of time and you can make it in advance (since it chills overnight). All really nice features when one is preparing for the holidays! It is pretty flexible; this version is really a slightly modified doubling of the original recipe and it still came out fine. I would assume that you could substitute other types of fruit if you prefer, but I wouldn't recommend hard fruits like apples because it would be a weird texture - this salad is pretty soft. Also, if you don't like marshmallows you could probably substitute cooked white rice. (I think rice in these kinds of salads is gross but I know that lots of other people prefer it, so it is something to try.)

Enjoy this salad!

Creamy Fruit Salad
1 20 oz can Pinapple Tidbits
1 15 oz can Mandarin Orange Slices
1/4 cup Pineapple Juice (or water)
6 tablespoons Lemon Juice
2 tablespoons Water
2 (3 oz) packages cook and serve Vanilla Pudding
2 cups miniature Marshmallows
2 cups Whipped Topping
2 Bananas sliced
Drain pineapple and mandarin orange juices into a medium saucepan and add in the extra pineapple juice, water, and lemon juice. Stir pudding mix into the saucepan and heat (stirring constantly, as pudding has a tendency to get lumpy) on medium until mixture comes to a full boil. Pull off of heat and let sit until cooled. Once cooled mix in the pineapple, mandarin oranges, and marshmallows; then gently mix in the whipped topping. Chill overnight in a covered bowl. Fold in the sliced bananas right before serving (the bananas brown if you put them in the night before).

Serves about 10 people.