Our second venture into the Alpha Bakery brought us to banana bread. I've been making a lot of banana bread this year and the boys absolutely love it, so I knew this was going to be a success.
Some day, I will have my dream kitchen with a giant island to work on and loads of room for my little helpers. Until then, I've decided to haul everything over to the table for easy access. It serves our purpose just fine.
This time around, I prepped all the ingredients ahead of time - just like they do on cooking shows - so everything was all ready to dump into the mixer. The boys enjoyed the dumping very much, and only a little bit landed on the table... and the floor.
The whole house smelled scrumptious as the bread was baking, and after dinner the boys got to taste the fruit of their labor (cause what goes better with spaghetti than banana bread right?). The boys loved it - no surprise.
I thought it was pretty good as well, but it wasn't my favorite banana bread recipe. I don't know what it was, the bread was actually very light and airy... it maybe just lacked a little bit of flavor. Not sure. Still, it was very simple to pull together and definitely worth making.
Banana Bread*
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups of mashed bananas (2 large)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 cups Gold Medal all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped nuts (we substituted chocolate chips, cause that's how we roll)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1. Heat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Grease a loaf pan with shortening.
3. Mix sugar, bananas, oil and eggs in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. (we used the Kitchenaid mixer because this is 2010 and, these are two year-olds we're working with here) Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into pan.
4. Bake until a wooden pick inserted in center of bread comes out clean, 60 to 70 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes, then loosen sides of loaf from pan and remove. Let cool completely before slicing.
Makes 1 loaf.
*Recipe taken from Gold Medal Alpha Bakery Children's Cookbook. Ordering info can be found on original Little Chefs post (A is for Apple Crisp).
