A couple of weeks ago we had a Banana Bread Bake-off at work. Adrian, the head Horticulturist had got a bunch of bananas for real cheap and on a whim passed them out challenging everyone to a Banana Bread Bake-off. I was game, I had a good recipe to share. I thought this was just a fun diversion. When I showed up three days later within my banana bread I was stunned. It wasn't what I thought, they were serious. The Conference room was set up with about 3 long tables, with tablecloths and charger plates. We had to fill out papers and our loaves of bread were assigned numbers. Gulp...I should of known that competing with Food Consumer Science Agents, Master Gardner's and 4-H staffers would of taken on a more serious tone. They even brought in outside judges, three county employees for judges. Anyway needless to say I did not win..but that is okay for now I have walked away with some good banana bread recipes- can't have enough of those. Here is the winning recipe:First Place Banana Bread
3 eggs. beaten
2/3 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup applesauce or pear sauce
4 ripe bananas mashed
1 t. vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
1/2 - 1 t. cinnamon
1/2 - 1 t. nutmeg
Preheat oven to 325. Spray two 8 x 4 loaf pans with vegetable spray. With mixer, combine eggs, yogurt, oil, applesauce, bananas and vanilla. Sift together in a different large bowl- flours, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir into banana mixture. Combine well, but do not over mix. Pour into prepared loaf pans.
Make a topping of 3 T. sugar, 3 T. finely chopped nuts, 1 t. cinnamon and generous dash of nutmeg. Press into the top of the unbaked loaves.
Bake 1 hour and 20 minutesor until cake tester comes out clean(when I cooked it is was done in just over an hour-so check) .
