I had some bananas that were over ripe. I had been watching them for a couple of days. I knew I was going to use them for banana bread. But I didn't want to just make plain old banana bread. I like experimenting with recipes. I also don't like to see anything to to waste, especially food. So I decided to look and see what else I had hanging around.
Inspirational Ingredients
Looking in the pantry I found some walnuts and pecans. There wasn't enough of either of them to make a pie. I had made banana bread with each of them before. But I had never added them together. I had about two cups between both of them. I figured I would use them all. I knew that the nuts would absorb a lot of the liquid in the bread. So I started thinking about what I could use to offset this. That's when I remembered the 2/3 bar of cream cheese.
Why Cream Cheese?
It was within a week of it's shelf life. I decided to use it in this recipe if I could. I looked up 'cream cheese banana bread' and found a recipe. But it called for a full bar of cream cheese. I noticed that it also called for 3/4 of a stick of butter. So I decided to do what I always do. I decided to make it up as I went, with a recipe as a guideline. So let's start with a list of the ingredients I used. Incidentally, they are also in the same order I used them.
The Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 3/4 package cream cheese, softened
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1⁄2 cups mashed bananas (about 4 bananas)
- 1 cup pecans
- 1 cup walnuts
- 1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla extract
The Directions
I decided I wanted to use my Ninja Pro Kitchen System for this recipe. Looking at all the mixing, I figured it would make it easier. So pre heat the over to 350 and prepare two loave pans by buttering the bottom and sides, and then covering them with flour. What follows is a description of how I mixed all this up and wound up with a delicious bread.
- I switched to the 'bowl' that comes with the system, and threw in a stick of butter. I put it on blend for a couple of minutes, opening the lid and stirring it by hand intermittently.
- Then I threw in the cream cheese and let it blend. If you look at the image on the top of this page, the one on the top left is the butter and cream cheese.
- I then blended in a cup of sugar. When I felt like it was well blended, I threw in another cup.
- Then I added the two eggs and let it blend until it was smooth. That's the image at the top right in this post main image.
- I then added the cups of sifted flour, baking powder, and baking soda to this mix, one at a time. The Ninja bowl was getting too full, so I emptied it into a large mixing bowl.
- I didn't bother cleaning out the Ninja mixing bowl, I just peeled the over ripe bananas in and blended until they were well mashed.
- I poured the banana puree into the mixing bowl and mixed it in by hand.
- I poured all the nuts and vanilla extract into the mixing bowl and stirred that by hand as well. That's the image on the bottom left.
- I filled the loave pans 1/2 way, and then threw them in the oven for an hour. (I had two different pans. One was glass, the other was metal. The glass one definitely cooked faster than the metal one)
The deliciousness of this bread can't be described. It's moist, it's nutty, and it has plenty of banana flavor to go around.
Don't be afraid to experiment with it yourself. The best food is the food that suits your taste. And you know how to do that!
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| Butter, Cream Cheese, and Sugar |
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| Butter, Cream Cheese, Eggs and Sugar |
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| Butter, Cream Cheese, Eggs, Sugar, Flower, Walnuts, Pecans |
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| Baked Loaf of Walnut-Pecan and Cream Cheese Banana B |
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| Cross Section of the bread |
According to some people, men can't tell time, can't follow directions and can't cook. That's simply not true. The owner and author of the site, me..
Stan Bush can cook. This site is simply a way for me to keep up with my recipes without putting it into my other 10 or so blogs. Everything is Google-ized, so it's connected to all my other stuff. This site gets it's name from road trips when I was in my 20's. By the time we would head home all we could afford was a loaf of bread and some potato chips.
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