Grandmother’s Banana Nut Bread
Equipment
- 1 Bundt pan
- 1 Large bowl
- 1 Medium Bowl
- 1 Small bowl
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 sticks Butter
- 3 each Bananas, large
- 1 cups Walnuts
- 2 cups Sugar
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 2 each Eggs
- 1/2 cup Milk
- 2 1/4 cup All-Purpose Flour
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350℉
- Soften butter (do not melt!)
- Mash bananas in medium bowl
- Crush walnuts
- Cream butter and sugar together in large bowl
- Add vanilla extract, eggs, and milk
- In small bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder
- Combine dry flour mix into wet butter mix
- Add mushed bananas
- Add walnuts, do not over mix
- Pour mix into a greased Bundt pan
- Bake for 1 hour
Notes
- Make sure your bananas are over ripe for this recipe, you don’t want them to be too firm or green. You don’t want them bruised either! This is the perfect way to use up that forgotten batch of bananas that’s been sitting on your counter for a week.
- It’s up to you how small you want your walnut pieces to be, I personally like chunkier bites of nuts.
- If you double the recipe, you can make 5 of the small aluminum loaf pans worth of banana nut bread.
- You can store loaves in the fridge or freezer. Enjoy cold from the fridge or reheat in the microwave or air fryer.
This banana nut bread recipe is family tradition. Every year at Christmas time, Grandmother and Papa will show up at the house toting a Christmas gift bag full of chocolate chip cookies and banana nut bread. They make the loaves in aluminum tins, topped with aluminum foil, and wrapped up with a Christmas ribbon bow. Once Christmas comes around, we inevitably have conversations like, “Jamie and I ate 3 loaves in only two days” and “Oh no, we ate an entire loaf each in one night!”
I never really eat the chocolate chip cookies cause there’s banana nut bread to be had, but those cookies magically transform into a bag of crumbs by dinnertime the next day too. I assume the kids sneak cookies all day while I’m busy stuffing my face with banana nut bread.
We only get banana nut bread once a year at Christmas. For the last few years, I’ve been plunking myself down at their kitchen counter once I hear they’re making bread. They each have their jobs. Papa is in charge of mashing the bananas and walnuts and moving loaves in and out of the stove. Grandmother is in charge of mixing the batter and pouring it into tins. Each year, they make about 30 loaves total, (6 double batches of the recipe above) to pass out to family and friends. I watch them work and ask for the recipe repeatedly. The problem is that their recipe changes every time they tell it to me, even if it’s only been 5 minutes since the last time they said it.
But this year, I finally got it. I got the banana nut bread recipe, and I made delicious moist warm perfect banana nut bread all by myself. And it turn out perfect.
But don’t worry Grandmother and Papa, I’ll always prefer the banana nut bread that you make.