Caramelized Banana Bread

There was a fun article in the Post today about a local high school cooking class.^[1] There are 160 kids taking the class at this one school. Only two of the 13 schools in that county offer culinary arts so some students take a bus to be a part of the program. Some of the good points made about kids taking such a class include learning nutrition and how to quickly prepare nutritious meals, the chemistry of ingredients, and the math of scaling recipes. They can also get a ServSafe certificate after taking the National Restaurant Association’s exam on food safety and sanitation. Even if the students do not go into food services, they’re still learning a valuable life lesson.

This recipe has you caramelize bananas prior to adding them to the bread mix, which slows things down a bit but is fun and smells yummy. It’s a modified version of a recipe in April 2012 Cooking Light magazine. I’m pretty psyched about my new, dark green counter tops that you can see under the mixer, but they usually don’t make a good background for photos.

Caramelized Banana Bread
3 T butter, softened
1/2 C packed dark brown sugar
3 medium ripe bananas, sliced
1/2 C buttermilk
3 T cooking oil
2 eggs
2 C flour
3/4 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
Preheat oven to 350°. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add brown sugar and bananas; sauté 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; cool 10 minutes. Place banana mixture in a large bowl. Beat with a mixer at medium speed until smooth.

Combine buttermilk and next 3 ingredients (through eggs). Combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately to banana mixture, and beat at low speed just until combined (do not over-mix). Scrape batter into a sprayed loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out with moist crumbs clinging. Cool for 10 minutes in pan. Remove bread from pan, and cool.