What do you do when your bananas are a little too mushy to eat? When you know what’s good for you, you make banana bread – or freeze them until you have time to make banana bread. My stepmother (who gave me this recipe) gave me the great tip to just put the bananas, skin and all, in the freezer. When you thaw them and slice the banana open it will be perfectly mushy for your banana bread purposes.

To celebrate the end of Letter B Week we made her homemade banana bread because of the great Double B’s and because it’s delicious. The best banana bread I’ve ever had and you all need to try it.

So my husband made MM a paper chefs hat and we pulled out the little apron and oven mitt that we got him for Christmas a couple years back and we all went in the kitchen and baked banana bread together. We don’t do this very often but maybe we should because it was spectacular. Dan was in charge of documenting the occasion so that I could put some pictures in the ABC scrapbook I’m making MM when this is all done. There are a ton of pictures from Banana Bread night and I made a little collage of some of the best for the book but I wanted to post a bunch of them individually here because there are some real gems. I’ll post the recipe at the bottom of the post.

These days when I ask MM to smile for the camera, I get strange looks like this one. Little does he know, I think it’s hilarious and adorable and it will not stop me from taking his picture. By the way, please notice that he’s wearing an all-blue outfit because The Color Of The Day was Blue and Blue starts with the Letter B. Thanks. Moving on.

This is just a quick shot to show off our respective aprons. We got MM’s at the Christmas Tree Shop way back when. Mine was made by my amazing friend Amanda @ Funkepunkemonke.

Dan the Man wrapped up little miss Baby Blueberry in our Moby Wrap so she could face out and watch all the festivities and his hands could be free to document everything, including the two of them being cute.

I did let him use the mixer to help me cream the shortening, but I did not personally let go of the mixer. I’m not crazy.

I put him to work on clean up, throwing egg shells in the sink, putting things away and throwing away any empty packages. Because I’m smart and he thought it was fun.

I also let him help me sift flour and other dry ingredients. This turned out to be difficult for him because you have to squeeze pretty hard and he has small hands but he was a trooper and kept trying for a while. Although eventually I finished it, he seemed more impressed with my sifting skills when he saw how hard it was. :OP

Of course he loved mashing the bananas for me and did a great job on this part. He’s a natural masher of mush.

Stirring it all together at the end…

then pouring the whole thing into the pan…

Of course we had to turn on the light so he could watch it bake.

It came out fantastic and we’ve been eating it for breakfast each morning since. Delicious. Alright, here’s the recipe for anyone who wants in on the world’s best banana bread.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup mashed bananas (about 3 bananas)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup milk

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cream shortening and add sugar gradually.
3. Then add the well beaten eggs.
4. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
5. Add this alternately with milk and bananas. Then add vanilla.
6. Pour into a greased and floured loaf pan and bake for 45-75 minutes or until a toothpick can come out of bread clean.
7. Enjoy!

Calorie Info: If you divide this into 16 servings there will be 210 calories in each slice. Smear it with some peanut butter (about 5 grams should do it, this is an added 30 calories if you use JIF creamy regular) and you are good to go.