Banana-Cherry Bread

This recipe doesn't have any pictures to go along with it. That's mainly because the bread was eaten in the first 4 hours after it came out of the oven. But as the previous post proved, pretty pictures don't alway equal a tasty meal.

This recipe is from my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook (circa 1968!) Jacob and I were up this morning and wanted to make banana bread. But we couldn't find the box mix in the pantry (I admit, Jacob wasn't trying as hard as I was to find it) so I decided to make bread the old-fashioned way. The recipe was only for banana bread, but we had fresh cherries from the tree so I threw those in too.

This was surprisingly easy. Who knew??

Ingredients:

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
Ripe banana, mashed
1/3 cup fresh cherries, pitted and sliced
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp soda (I took this to mean baking soda)
1/2 tsp salt

Directions:

Cream shortening and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in banana and cherries. Sift together dry ingredients, add to banana mixture (I cheat, I don't pre-sift them. Who has time? And why waste the extra bowl??)

Pour into greased bread pan. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes.

Verdict: This was so tasty! It was nearly as easy as adding eggs and milk to the box mix, and just as good. A little too much sugar, so you may want to cut that back a bit. Also, it takes a bit longer than 35 minutes to cook completely. That could have to do with the cherries and their juice, I have no idea.

But it was good! And I cooked it from scratch! Yeah, me!