Vintage Banana Bread
Mom's banana bread was soft and fragrant, with little bits of nuts scattered throughout. Sometimes she cooked it in an old glass loaf pan, but usually she made it into little cupcakes. I would gorge on these on weekend visits, substituting banana bread muffins for breakfast and lunch and sneaking them in late night snacks as well. I was addicted!
Sometime before she got sick she showed me a recipe in an old magazine. The magazine was so worn that it immediately flipped open to the exact stained page. The paper was brittle with age, parts of it torn.
This is the only recipe that I was ever able to get from mom. She herself never used measuring cups or spoons and was never able to really articulate an actual recipe. Except for this one, because she had the magazine that taught her. I doubt she followed it too closely because probably for even this, she didn't measure. But I followed the recipe exactly and to me it was a bit like having mom back for just a moment as I bit into the soft warmth of the banana bread.
Mom tore the page out of the magazine to give it to me, but I left it somewhere at her house with every intention of getting back to it one day. I found it again while cleaning out her things. It was stored in an old shoebox full of odds and ends. For a really long time I left it there. I would occasionally look at the fragile pages and think about how to preserve them but my heart would twinge and I'd have to put it away again. This year, the five year anniversary of her passing, I've finally pulled out the recipe. Thanks to Google and my old college Japanese classes I was able to translate it into English.
I couldn't find a date for the magazine, but there was a picture of a desk in an advertisement that looked exactly like a desk I had growing up, down to a little lock in the upper right hand drawer and a diagram of constellations attached to it. We got those desks in the late seventies, so the recipe is probably circa 1978-1984.
I forgot to take pictures until most of them were eaten but remembered just in time to take a shot of the last four!
Banana Bread
- 1 stick room temperature butter
- 2-3 over ripe, brown banans (they sweeten as they get ripe)
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
- 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Prepare cupcake tin with paper liners.
In a large mixing bowl cream butter and sugar into a pomade.
Peel and remove strings on the banana. In a medium bowl mash the bananas with a fork to get approximately 1 1/2 cup of mashed banana.
Scoop the bananas into the bowl with the butter and sugar.
Using the empty bowl that held the mashed banana, break two eggs and lightly beat them to mix. Add the eggs to the large mixing bowl and mix with the butter/sugar/banana mixture.
Add chopped walnuts to bowl.
Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together before adding to the bowl. Mix until blended.
Fill each cupcake liner with the mixture, about halfway to three quarters full.
Cook for between 14-18 minutes.