Banana Walnut Bread with a Twist

I am SO excited to tell you about this recipe because I kind of made it up! Sort of... I took this recipe and added my own twist to it.

Banana Walnut Bread

 3/4 cup sugar

 1/2 cup Butter, softened

 2 Eggs

 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (I have found that 1 very ripe banana is about a half of a cup)

 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

 1/2 teaspoon salt

 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

 preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine sugar, butter and eggs in large bowl. Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until creamy. Add banana and vanilla. Beat at low speed until well mixed. Stir in all remaining ingredients.

Spoon batter into well greased and floured 8 x 4-inch loaf pan. Bake 60-70 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes; remove from pan. Place onto cooling rack. Cool completely.

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The ingredients that the recipe called for.

I am still using the pure vanilla I bought when we went on a cruise to Mexico. I HIGHLY recommend you buy a LARGE bottle if you ever go! (or BEG someone to bring you a bottle if they ever go)

Ready to go into the oven. Recipe filled 4 mini muffin pans

 

I did add the walnuts and then I decided that I needed to use up a sweet apple I had sitting on the counter so I peeled and cored the apple then I diced it up into really small pieces. I'm not sure what kind of apple it was now but it was either a Gala or a Golden Delicious. It was not a tart, baking apple. It was about a cup of apples that I put in.  Then I thought, what the heck..lets add these strawberries in too but first I cut the green tops off, then I cut them into pieces and mashed them in a separate bowl and added a teaspoon of sugar to about 1/4 cup strawberry mashed up ness..(new word) After the strawberries set for a couple minutes I threw them in the banana bread mix along with the apples and hoped it baked up nice. AND IT DID!!! I will never make plain banana bread again! I poured the batter into 4 mini bread pans and baked it up so I could put some in the freezer for when my parents and sister came to visit and of course I had to share some with my co-workers. They all LOVED it too!