Post-work nanner bread craving

The Monday work day has officially come and gone, and I am in the mood for banana bread.


I discovered a great recipe I found on the ol' internets several weeks ago that helped me produce an almost perfect loaf of banana bread, so I am currently trying to recreate that and fulfill my "nanner" bread longings.


The recipe is by Zoe Francois, author of the blog Zoe Bakes (which is phenomenal if you're into making tasty things), and it is as follows (and can also be found here) (also my own pictures are used) (and I've added notes that follow the way I am baking it at this very moment in time):

Pecan Banana Bread

1 ½ cups (about 4 medium sized) over ripe bananas, mashed 
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour (spoon and sweep)
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar, tightly packed
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons heavy cream
¾ cup pecan pieces

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F with the rack in the middle of the oven. Butter an 8 ½ x 4 ½ inch loaf pan, set aside.
2. In a bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
3. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugar and brown sugar on medium speed for about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each.  Mix in the vanilla and heavy cream. (So I didn't have heavy cream last time, so I used vanilla yogurt instead, which turned out wonderfully. This time I still didn't have heavy cream, and I had yogurt, as pictured, but I very sadly realized that it was moldy (grossssss). I only have 1% milk, which I didn't think would work well, then I saw that I still had Cool Whip in the fridge from a friend who brought it here last week.... It'll be interesting to see if it still works out!)
4. Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a rubber spatula to stir, alternate adding the dry ingredients and the mashed bananas in 3 batches, mixing just enough to combine them. Add the nuts and mix just to combine. (Didn't add nuts. I like my banana bread super simple.)
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth out the top. Bake for about 1 hour or until a tester comes out clean. If the top is over browning after 45 minutes, gently drape the top with foil.

Bake, lil buddy, bake!!

One hour and dinnertime later....

Aaaayyooo! Here she is! Photo-bomb courtesy of our friend Rory:

And the Cool Whip actually worked decently well, if you ever need to substitute it in baked goods for heavy cream...

Not a whole lot can brighten the mood more than success in baking. :)

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