Momoo's Banana Bread - Guest Post by Liz

We had three browning bananas on our counter, and although this is the color I prefer my banana to be, I decided to use them to make banana bread for Drew and I to have for the week.

I like to use my grandmother’s recipe, whom my brother and I affectionately referred to as Momoo (pronounced MOM MOO), while the other cousins called her Grandma and didn’t like that the youngest cousins had made up this strange name that seemed to take precedence.

The last few times I made Momoo’s banana bread recipe I decided to alter it slightly. Drew came across a recipe that required whole wheat flour and so we had some of it sitting in our kitchen cabinets and the Fraker in me doesn’t like to waste, so I decided to halve the flour in the banana bread recipe with ¾ whole wheat flour and ¾ regular flour. Drew and I both couldn’t tell the difference and decided to use this combination going forward hoping there were some nutritious benefits.

One other way to make it a bit healthier was to use ¾ cup of sugar instead of 1 cup. Again, we couldn’t tell a difference between leaving out a little sugar, so we continue to do that. Also, we learned from a cooking show that if you heat up the mashed up ripe bananas in microwave it releases more of their sugars and will naturally make the bread sweeter. You can also add 4 bananas instead of 3, which we have also tried.

Below is Momoo’s recipe, which as her recipes often were, is straight and to the point without a lot of guidance or description:

For some reason when I decide to make banana bread I have a lot on my mind or I loose focus. Which could be in part because I have made it many times before so I don’t think I need to concentrate as much. But almost every time I make it I don’t mix the ingredients in the right “order”. So this time I put in all of the dry ingredients together (including sugar) and then realized I should have started with mixing the softened butter (which I think is better off just completely melted for mixing purposes), eggs, bananas and sugar. I was able to salvage this a bit and scoop up the sugar from the top of the dry ingredients and add it over to the eggs, butter and banana mixture. So pictured below is the ingredients all mixed together before adding to the pan. I have messed it up almost every time, and it hasn’t made a taste difference yet!