Christmas Banana Bread Recipe
Christmas baking has as many traditions as there are different people. Christmas cookies are great, but there is nothing wrong with making special banana bread in preparation for this magical season. In fact, I love it even more than Christmas cookies, because banana bread fills the house with wonderful smells that cookies would never do.
We have always made banana bread before Christmas. This year it's even more special and easier because I have Instacart to help me get all the ingredients I need for baking without me leaving the house. It's a special COVID year 2020, you see, and we are advised to stay home as much as we can, so I am quite happy to delegate my grocery shopping to Instacart instead of me mingling with all the mask-clad people in busy stores. They will do it for you and do it fast.
The beauty of Christmas banana bread is that it's super easy to make and I get to use all my overly ripe bananas. Kids love it as a snack and I myself don't mind it with some butter and milk too. I take a simple recipe and add a few special ingredients to make it more suitable for Christmas - think cardamom powder, poppy seeds, vanilla extract and orange zest. If I have dried cranberries, I add them too. Kids are not too crazy about them, so I left them out this time.
Besides Instacart helping me with groceries, I also have Personalization Mall to thank for special personalized kitchen tools to make my cooking more stylish. I ordered personalized wooden utensils with cutting board and using all of them makes me feel a bit like Martha Stewart.
Without further ado, let's get to the most soft and most Christmassy banana bread:
Ingredients:
- 3 ripe organic bananas
- 1 stick of organic butter (1/2 cup)
- 2 cups of four (I mix organic whole wheat with all-purpose 1:2)
- 2 organic eggs
- 1 teaspoon organic vanilla extract
- ¾ cups of organic raw sugar
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- A pinch of Himalayan salt
- ½ teaspoon of organic cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons of poppy seeds
- ½ teaspoon of cardamom powder
- Zest from one organic orange
- Dried cranberries (optional)
First step is to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Then spray your baking dish with organic coconut oil or butter it to prevent sticking. Set it aside until you are ready to bake.
Take a medium size bowl and put in the butter stick. Melt it in a microwave for about 30 seconds. Add three bananas to the bowl with melted butter and mash them a fork. Then add vanilla extract and 2 eggs. Mix with a spatula until the mixture is smooth and no traces of eggs are visible. Last add poppy seeds and orange zest. Stir them in and set the bowl aside.
Take another bowl for all the dry ingredients: four, sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, cardamom powder, and dried cranberries if you choose to use them. Mix everything together with a wooden spoon or in my case Personalization Mall fancy spoon.
Final step is to slowly add dry ingredients into the bowl with banana puree while slowly stirring everything together.
Make sure you don't feel sugar crunching on the bottom of the bowl before you are ready to bake this delicious treat. Pour the mixture into the dish sprayed with coconut oil and put it in the oven.
Christmas banana bread will bake for about 35-40 minutes. It's done when a wooden stick inserted in the middle comes out clean, the house smells amazing, and the bread is golden brown.
I like to serve it with butter, but my kids could eat it plain in one day!
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Free Banana from Whole Kids Club
Did you know that bananas are one of the most nutritious foods? And kids love them. I bet you did not know you could get a banana or an apple for free from Whole Foods? Just take your kid to Whole Foods to grab a free banana from Whole Kids Club.