In retrospect banana blueberry bread just doesn't sound right. I should have gone with blueberry banana bread but I had already printed the tag and the recipe card and taken all the photos so I guess that is what it shall be.
Either way, according to my taste tester, it turned out great. I am lucky to have someone willing to try all my culinary endeavors that I myself will not eat (you know…carbs and all…).
I will give you my one banana bread tip. Don't put too many bananas in it. Two overripe bananas are just enough or you end up with a heavy, dense loaf that takes forever to bake.
Those bananas are not very photogenic but they are the perfect level of ripeness. We went through a phase were we would buy too many bananas, two or three would get to this stage and we would throw them in the freezer with the intention to use them in smoothies or bread. Never happened. I just had a freezer full of black bananas. So now we only buy a couple of bananas at a time and if they get to this stage then we either throw them out or bake something right then.
This afternoon, even though the temps topped out in the 90's, I decided to bake some banana bread. Since I also had some blueberries in the freezer that were getting close to their sell-by date I thought I would throw them in too. I only used half a cup because I think too many blueberries isn't a good thing either. You want nice balance of banana and blueberry.
So on with the recipe!
Banana Blueberry Bread
Preheat oven to 325°. Grease an 8" loaf pan.
Ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup buttermilk*
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 2 ripe bananas, smooshed
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 3/4 cups flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 cup blueberries (fresh is best but frozen works fine too)
Combine the eggs, buttermilk, oil and bananas.
Sift together the dry ingredients and add to banana mixture, mixing thoroughly but not excessively so. Fold in blueberries. Pour into prepared pan.
Place on rack in center of the oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes. I always start checking around the one hour mark and as soon as a toothpick inserted comes out clean I take it out of the oven. Cool in pan for about 30 minutes and then turn out onto cooling rack.
*You may recall my tip about using dried buttermilk. If you use it then add you will want to add 1/3 cup water to the wet ingredients and 1 Tbsp. and 1/4 tsp. of the dried buttermilk to the dry ingredients in place of regular buttermilk.
I hope you give it a try.
