Banana Split Bread

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my blog!  Another year has flown past so fast I can hardly believe it!  I still enjoy my little corner of the foodie world and appreciate every one of my followers.  You all make it worth the time I spend writing and posting pictures of my recipes.  Here’s to another year of sharing food!

To honor the start of my 4th year I am reposting my famous banana bread recipe with a twist- maraschino cherries!  It’s a sort of banana split bread.  The only thing missing is the chocolate syrup and you could drizzle that over your slice of bread if you’d like!  I thought it was excellent sliced and eaten plain.

Mash bananas until mostly smooth and mix with eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and oil

First I mashed my bananas with a potato masher.  It’s a round disk with holes and gets the bananas almost smooth.  You could use a blender or food processor but mashing the bananas is my thing.  I like to physically work at pulverizing them until they’re a creamy mass of banana goodness.  (Yeah I might be overthinking that.  Like I said, it’s my thing).  I added the eggs, oil, buttermilk and vanilla to the banana mixture and stirred well.

Whisk together dry ingredients and add to wet ingredients

In a separate bowl I whisked together the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.  I added the dry ingredients to the wet just until mixed.

Stir just until mixed to prevent the bread from being tough and rubbery

I chopped the cherries finely and added them to the bowl, folding and stirring them in.

Add diced cherries and stir to distribute

I poured the batter into two pans as I’d doubled the recipe.  I don’t often double it, I prefer to make each recipe separately to prevent having to stir it extra long and that makes the bread tough.  I like the bread soft and almost falling apart in my hand tender.  I did double it this time because I was doing a lot of baking and time was a factor.

Spread in pan. I doubled the recipe here

I slid the pans into my preheated oven and baked the loaves for 1 hours.  I toothpick tested it and the toothpick was clean.  I placed the pans on a rack for 10 or 15 minutes, then ran a knife around the outsides of the pans and eased the loaves out onto the rack to cool further.

Banana Split Bread

I really loved the flavor of maraschino cherries in my favorite banana bread.  My secret is to let the bananas get very brown, brown all over in fact, so that they are at their ultimate flavor and sweetness.  Making sure your bananas are super ripe will insure you have the best bread ever!

Banana Split Bread

Banana Split Bread

1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 bananas
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup finely chopped maraschino cherries

Preheat oven to 350 °F Grease bottom of a 12″ x 3 1/2″ loaf pan or loaf pan of your choice.

Mash bananas then combine with eggs, oil, buttermilk and vanilla.

Stir together flour, sugar, soda and salt in a separate bowl.  Add flour mixture to wet mixture and stir just until combined. Stir in cherries.

Pour into greased pan and bake for 1 hour or until toothpick tests done.

Let cool in pan for 10 minutes then turn out onto a rack and cool completely. Store in a covered container at room temperature.

Freezes well