shared bread recipe 8/10

So a few weeks ago I posted some stuff that my best friend made and I had really wanted to try her bread recipe. Since I always have about-to-go-rotten bananas around I love finding ways to use them besides in shakes and on pnut butter and banana sandwiches. So we tried out her recipe in our brand new bread maker and WooHoo! We can make sweet “batter” breads in this machine too! It came out really moist and delish. I can tell you we’ll definitely be trying more sweet breads in the future!


Lemon-Blueberry Banana Bread
from cooking light

2c Flour
3/4 t Baking Soda (if the bread forms a crack down the center while baking, then the soda is doing its job)
1/2 t Salt
1 c Sugar (I used crystallized cane sugar)
1/4 c Butter, softened (always unsalted for baking)
1 c Mashed Bananas (about 2)
2 Eggs (or 1/2 c substitute)
1/3 c Low Fat Sour Cream
1 t Vanilla
1 c Fresh Blueberries (I used frozen, thawed, drained, patted)
1 T Lemon Zest i used dried
i also added some cinnamon and mace becuase i thought it needed spice

Preheat oven to 350. Put the flour, soda, and salt into a small bowl and incorporate. In a separate bowl, cream the sugar and butter (sugar is usually considered a 'wet' ingredient because it will absorb into the wet). Add bananas, eggs, sour cream, and vanilla and combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet about 1/2 cup at a time. Then, fold in zest and blueberries. Spoon batter into a greased loaf pan (I used two small disposable pans lined with parchment). Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

i just poured everything except blueberries into the breadmaker and pressed start. after a bit i added the berries (so they wouldn't get all chopped up in the mixing) and waited. an hour later i had fabulous blueberry banana bread! we didn't make the glaze, below.

Glaze (really, just extra calories)
1/4c (2 oz)
1/3 less fat cream cheese (a.k.a. Neufschatel) softened
3 T Powdered sugar
1 T lemon juice (I used more because it needed more tang)
3 T water.

stir until smooth and pour over banana bread

so this was another success that was also a first; sweet bread in our new bread maker! i didn't totally adore the recipe though. i thought it's be better with brown sugar, lots more spices and maybe some walnuts. it was a really interesting twist with the berries and bananas though. not sure if it was a little too overwhelming for my amature taste buds but it sure tasted good just the same. more to come in the future! keep baking...