Grandma Joan’s Banana Bread

Bananas don’t usually last long enough in this house to make it to banana bread. But a few weeks ago, we were having dinner with my friend Eunice and I happened to glance into her freezer and see piles and piles of frozen, perfectly browned bananas. She sighed that she never had time to do anything with them, so I offered to take a few off her hands. I love banana bread because it’s another one of those baked goods that I can pretend is healthy. Because, hey, fruit!

I don’t have a particular favorite banana bread recipe. It’s not something I make often, what with the lack of overripe bananas in the house, so I haven’t carefully honed one recipe to be the single, perfect banana bread. And there are more banana bread recipes out there than I know what to do with. Banana Bread is a classic, so I left the internet behind and pulled out my Grandmas’ recipe boxes. I was not disappointed: my search yielded at least four different recipes for banana bread. There were only minor differences between the four (and they all started out with shortening), so I chose the one with the least amount of sugar. Because I’m clearly always thinking of my health.

This recipe was my Grandma Joan’s, and it looks as though it was much used.

I skipped the shortening, and used butter instead. And as I used my handy-dandy and much beloved mixer to cream the butter and sugar together and stir in the bananas, I thought how much my Grandma would probably have loved to have a mixer.

I especially love cooking with her recipes, because I never got a chance to know her. She died when my dad was a boy. But these cards, with her tiny, slanted handwriting and her cooking stains make me feel like I’m getting a small glimpse into her life. She made this banana bread, and while she might not have used the pecans and hazelnuts I used (I suspect with nine kids, less expensive walnuts would have been the preferred option), she pulled the same craggy, cracked loaf from the oven, and waited for it to cool on the counter, filling the kitchen with the sweet smell of sugar and bananas.

Grandma’s Banana Nut Bread

• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• juice from half a lemon
• 1 cup chopped nuts
• about 1 cup of mashed bananas (3 medium bananas)
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugar, and set aside. In a small mixing bowl, mash together the bananas, the nuts, and the lemon juice. Stir the banana mixture into the butter and sugar.

Stir in the flour, salt, and baking soda, and mix until just combined.

Grease a loaf pan (I used cooking spray), then pour the batter into the pan. Smooth the top as well as you can with a spatula. Bake the loaf for about 50 minutes, or until a knife entered into the center comes out clean.

Remove the loaf to a wire rack to cool. Try to wait until the bread is mostly cool to slice into it: When it’s still warm, it crumbles a little more.