Blueberry Banana Bread

We love banana bread and I make it often. Usually I put walnuts in it, but I used up all of our walnuts the other day when I made those glorious sticky buns. So no walnuts today! I considered putting chocolate chips in. Sean and I like it that way, but for some reason, my children don't! LOL! Go figure. I got the idea to put blueberries in the bread. Ding ding, we have a winner! It was great! We buy blueberries in the summer at the farmers market and then bag and freeze them. We mainly do this to maintain Sean's blueberry pancake with blackberry syrup obsession (about which I'll post in a future blog). We always have frozen blueberries on hand. So I made one of the banana bread loaves plain for the kids, and I added blueberries to the other. It was simply wonderful! Yum!

I use the banana cake recipe from an older edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook (around 1986, I think) for my banana bread recipe. I usually add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon to the recipe. For some crazy reason I added 2 this time. I'll stick to 1 in the future. Also, I got the idea to add some molasses to this recipe too. I didn't like the addition, and I won't be doing that again! Maybe I just put too much in. I think I added somewhere between 1 and 2 tablespoons. I definately tasted it in the finished product. It also gave the bread a much darker color.


Blueberry Banana Bread
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teapoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup mashed ripe banana
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
about 1 1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (I didn't really measure)

Grease and lightly flour two loaf pans. In a mixer bowl combine the first 5 ingredients. Add butter and banana; beat on low speed of electric mixer till combined. Add buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla; beat 2 minutes on medium speed. Fold in blueberries. Turn batter into prepared pans. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until done. Cool 10 minutes on wire racks. Romove from pans; cool thoroughly.