Anybody else remember Cooking Light magazine? Back in the time before the internet killed magazines, this was my favorite cooking magazine. I liked that they removed fat but added flavor by adding more ingredients, though I admit some of those ingredient lists were dauntingly long.
I made this banana bread pretty regularly for the Sunday Night Dinner family. I’m thinking I will share the recipes from that era here in future posts.
Tonight I made the recipe with a whole bunch of bananas that were about to fall apart. I’m guessing I more than doubled the amount of bananas called for this evening, but like usual I failed to measure the amount of bananas I use. Just use a lot of ripe bananas. I also discovered I only had half the amount of cinnamon on hand, so I made up the difference with pumpkin spice. Poor pumpkin spice, it’s a blend of good things: ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and sometimes allspice. It gets such a bad rap! I also was out of whole-wheat flour so I used white flour. It’s delicious anyway.
I usually bake it in three pans because of the extra banana and because I seem to have terrible luck with things cooking over the sides. According to the recipe notes this bread doesn’t rise much because of the whole wheat flour and oats, so you might be able to use two pans.
Molasses-Oat Banana Bread
Equipment
- Mixer
- bread pans
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 1/3 cup regular oats it works with quick oats if that's what you have.
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon I use 1/2 pumpkin pie spice.
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 2/3 cup dark molasses
- 4 large eggs
- 2 cup mashed ripe banana I always use a lot more.
- 2/3 cup plain yogurt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Lightly spoon flours into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flours, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt, stirring with a whisk.
- Place sugar, butter, and molasses in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 1 minute). Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add banana, yogurt, and vanilla; beat until blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed just until moist.
- Spoon batter into an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and 5 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.