Banana Bread Recipe 2---Southern Living Magazine January 2005

Cream Cheese-Banana-Nut Bread/ Southern Living

From "Southern Living" magazine January 2005

Makes 2 loaves
Bake 1 hour, cool 40 minutes
Warm bread is YUMMY but to get perfect slices, let bread cool 30 minutes, and cut with a serrated knife.

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 cups mashed bananas ---about 4-5 medium bananas
1 cup chopped pecans, toasted
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition.Combine flour and next 3 ingredients; gradually add to butter mixture, beating at low speed just until blended. Stir in bananas, pecans, and vanilla. Spoon batter into 2 greased and floured 8 x 4 inch loafpans.Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until a long wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean and sides pull away from pan, shielding with aluminum foil last 15 minutes to prevent browning, if necessary. Cool bread in pans on wire racks 10 minutes. Remove from pans, and cool 30 minutes on wire racks before slicing. May optionally bake muffins instead---spoon batter evenly into 24 paper-lined muffin cups. Bake at 350 degree for 25 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes.

Another option---BESTPrepare bread batter as above and spoon into desired pans. Stir together 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar, 1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans, 1 tbsp all-purpose flour, 1 tbsp melted butter, and 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon. Sprinkle mixture evenly over batter. Bake and cool as directed.

Banana Bread Recipe

I thought I would share the Banana Bread recipe I used this past week. Actually, I have a couple I like and this one in particular comes from a recipe book I've had a long time, A Taste of Georgia. It's the simple, straight-forward one. To me, the very best is from The Southern Living Magazine and I couldn't locate it this week, so I resorted to the simple one here below.

Banana Bread

Oven---300 degrees for 1 hour

Yield---1 large loaf or 2 small loaves


1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 bananas, mashed
2 cups flour--all purpose
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup of nuts, pecan or walnuts ( I prefer pecan, and for us Southern girls we say PEE'can, not PaCON' ~~~~~~~ LOL---just had to add that as my hubbie is from Chicago and we say that differently)

Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs and beat well after each. Add mashed bananas, flour, soda, vanilla, and nuts Grease and flour 1 large or 2 small loaf pans. Pour dough into pan. Bake for 1 hour or until brown at 300.

I actually tripled (x3) the entire recipe and it made exactly the 6 loaves as in the pic. I used the one time use metal pans.

I really like the Southern Living Magazine recipe better. I'm going to try to find again and will post because it has a really yummy topping added to it and also has sour cream in it which gives it better flavor to me.
So, that's it! Pretty simple recipe but it is so good with coffee in the morning.
Another thought too is that I have made the smaller loaves (like muffin size but rectangular) and freeze them individually. They just don't last long even in the freezer here though!

Dreaming About Snow

I'm so excited looking at the weather channel now. Looks like we are going to get alot of snow!
There just is something about snow that seems to completely stop time here in Georgia. Everything looks clean, beautiful, pure, calm, peaceful, and brings out the child in me. I'm charging my camera to get ready for some good pics. My dream is to get Raven, Ruby and Tom together for a picture.......and of course someone would hold Ren for a fast pic. He even has a fleece-lined cord jacket with a hood; however, on second thought it might not fit the little feller any more because he has been eating too much table food lately!
I will be too excited to sleep tonight! I think we may get 3-6 inches. We'll see.
Meghan, I"m hoping you get snow too!!!! Reminds me of when we first moved here, I mean about 1 month later we had a 6 inch snow in about 2 hours. That was January 2002.