Banana Bread

Warm and chewy, soft, sweet and fragrant; banana bread is a lactose-free dieter's dream dessert, and I'll tell you why: banana bread is not only a great comfort food and a really good use for brown bananas, it has no dairy in it whatsoever. Unless you put real butter in the mix of course.

My banana bread is wonderful, soft and almost flaky when warm, with a chewy denser texture after it has cooled. What's my secret? Margarine. About one fourth of the reccomended amount of fat called for (usually shortning) in the recipie of your choice, you subsitute with margarine. Do that and you will be in banana bread heaven, the margarine gives it a richness and it keeps me from slathering the stuff on it a half inch thick after it is done; which is by far worse than the small amount that I add to it.

To make this recipe even more decadent I spread it with my favorite sandwich topping: Nutella, giving a chocolate-banana feel. But I prefer to eat it plain.

With my recipe, the three close to black bananas that I had lying around made a loaf and six muffins, about a recipe and a half.

Banana Nut Bread (from the Better Homes and Gardens *New* Cookbook Copyright 1976)

1/3 cup shortening

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup mashed ripe banana (about 2 bananas)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I left out the nuts, not just because I didn't have any, but because I wanted my one-year-old to be able to eat the bread too)

Cream together shortening and sugar; add eggs and beat well. Sift together dry ingredients; add to creamed mixture alternately with banana, blending well after each addition. Stir in nuts (or not).

Pour into well-greased 9x5x3-inch loaf pan. Bake in moderate oven (350 F) 45 to 50 minutes or till done (my loaf took the full 50, but the muffins took less time, about 35-40 minutes). Remove from pan; cool on rack. Wrap and store overnight.

I love looking at older recipes, especially ones that my mom collected from the sixties and seventies. It is interesting to note that baking soda is called just "soda" and a "moderate" oven was 350 degrees farenheight. Older recipes give insight into what was popular in the food world at those times and how important cooking was by how complicated the dishes they chose to prepare were.