Banana Nut Bread Mufffins and a Cookbook Cover

     One of my very favorite things abut visiting my grandparents is that my grammy always has a loaf of banana nut bread on hand. I love banana nut bread! So when I decided to try out the recipe book The Husbandman just bought for me, (I finally have my Betty Crocker Cookbook! I'm really a housewife/wife/cook/adult now!) I decided that using those slightly over-ripe bananas on the counter might be perfect!

     So here is my walk through of Betty Crocker's recipe. (Find the complete recipe here.) First mash your bananas. I always find this step oddly satisfying, and slightly gross all at the same time.

     In a separate bowl, blend your sugar and butter till the butter is fluffy.

       It should look something like this:

     Then drop in your eggs and and mix again.

     Now back to your bananas. Add them to the mixing bowl, along with the vanilla and buttermilk. (If you don't have buttermilk, you can "make" it by adding a teaspoon of lemon juice or vinegar to regular milk, then letting the two sit for about ten minutes.)

      Then your dry ingredients come in,

     And a cupful of nuts. Sorry I forgot to take a picture of this crucial step. Then scoop out the batter into your muffin tins. I didn't have any PAM so I used cupcake liners, but you can do whichever makes you happier. I found that a melon-baller made the scooping process so much easier.

     I since I used a minimuffin sheet, they only needed to bake for about 12 minutes. If you use regular size muffins sheets, the baking time is more like 25 minutes, and then 55 minutes for a loaf pan.  Then them cool for as long as you can stand to wait. And then enjoy!

      And since I mentioned my new cookbook, I thought I would share how I cover all my cookbooks. I'm a very messy cook, so I cover both my cookbooks and myself whenever possible (Yay aprons!) I pick up oil-cloth remnants when they are in the bin at Joannes just for this purpose.

     The process is really simple, especially when you are using a non-fray material. Measure a piece of material eight inches longer than your book-to-cover and one inch taller. Fold over four inches on each side of the material to make cover flaps, and then sew them down. That's it. Slip it onto you book, and it should look like this:

     Here is the big picture.

       




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