Puny's Banana Bread...not puny!

Every time I come home to visit my parents, Mama has overly ripe bananas in the freezer for me to make some kind of breakfast treat for them. I like trying to find new recipes to try and this time was no different. The book I used this time was Jan Karon's Mitford Cookbook and Kitchen Reader. If you're not familiar with her Mitford series, it is about a preacher in a small town called Mitford. He has a housekeeper named Puny who takes good care of him. She keeps his refrigerator stocked with homecooked meals; otherwise, he would eat every meal at the local diner and his doctor is against that! Eventually, Father Tim meets and marries a woman named Cynthia (who has her own banana bread recipe), but Puny just can't give up cooking for him. This, with a couple of modifications, is her recipe!

This bread was nice and soft with a sweet and clearly banana taste. I think having three bananas instead of my normal two was the key to actually tasting the fruit. I recommend this highly. Because of the great nutritional benefit of bananas, this is my entry for Sweetnicks ARF Tuesday. Check her site for even more wonderful recipes.

Puny's Banana Bread

1 1/4 cup sugar (I used 3/4 cup brown sugar)*

1/3 cup oil

2 eggs, beaten

3 ripe bananas, mashed

1 1/2 cups AP (white lily if you have it) flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a loaf pan by spraying it with cooking spray. Beat sugar and oil together until fluffy. Add eggs and mix. Mix in mashed bananas. In a separate bowl sift together the flour, soda, and salt. Add 1 cup of the flour mixture to the banana mixture. Stir until just combined. Mix in HALF of the buttermilk. Add the remaining flour and buttermilk and stir until just combined. Pour into prepared loaf pan and smooth out the top. Bake for 45 minutes to one hour (I DEFINITELY needed an hour!), or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove and allow to cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan.

*The decreased amount of sugar still provided for a very sweet bread. I don't think you need the 1 1/4 cups, 3/4 is plenty. If you wanted to reduce it to 1/2 cup, it would probably still be sweet enough. The brown sugar gives the bread a darker color.