Ancient Family Secret Revealed (aka my Banana Tea Bread)
Banana buying in my tribe works out similarly to the chip to salsa ratio theory — it never seems to get the right balance. One week I buy 6 bananas and they are gone within three hours. The next week, I buy six bananas and four of them will ripen to that dark brown “I won’t even touch it to throw it away” color.
So – finding a great Banana Bread recipe was just my frugal way to make my mother proud and not let good food go to waste! I started using this recipe years ago from the Stahl Mennonite Church cookbook, and found a few important tweaks to make an already AMAZING recipe my own.
The recipe already had sour cream as a secret ingredient, which I believe really makes this bread stand out from other recipes. Personally, I am a HUGE fan of Daisy brand due to it’s clean and simple ingredients – cultured skim milk, cream and salt. My tribe is not crazy about nuts in any baked goods, so I leave those out.
MY personal twist which we think really kicks this up a notch is using frozen bananas. I just take those ugly brown ones from the counter that the rest of my crew ignore and throw them in the freezer. When there are four or six in there, I will take them out, thaw them in their skin on the counter, and make giant batch of this recipe I have learned the hard way if I only make one batch it would be gone in less than 30 minutes after baking (really – I am not exaggerating — I have watched each one of my kiddos chop off half a loaf and walk off with it in hand to devour)! Freezing and thawing seems to really bring out the banana’s natural sweetness, as well as help to get the banana truly distributed throughout the batter. They look pretty ugly, but they taste amazing!
These loaves also freeze quite well, or make mini loaves to distribute to neighbors during our new coronormal. ENJOY!
Banana Tea Bread
Two secret ingredients make this the best banana bread you will ever have!
Ingredients
- 1 cup mashed bananas (freeze then thaw) about two
- 1.5 cup sifted flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup softened butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup sour cream
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
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Grease and flour loaf pan.
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Mash the banana.
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Cream butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl.
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Mix together flour, soda, and salt. Add to butter mixture with bananas and sour cream. Mix until well blended.
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Pour into loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes to an hour (check with a toothpick at 50 minutes).
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Try to let cool before cutting (my family has trouble waiting that long).
Yummy! I have a go-to banana bread recipe as well. I have the same problem with buying bananas! I have some right now that will be made into banana bread later today (3 small loaves so I can give 2 away!). My secret ingredient is a handful of chocolate chips!