Another banana bread to add to the collection. This recipe continues with the booze-theme started by yesterday's cabernet cupcakes. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo, but I made mini-bundts for this recipe.

Banana Bread
From How to be a Domestic Goddess

• scant 1/2 cup golden raisins
• 6 tablespoons bourbon or dark rum 3 tablespoons dark rum
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs 2 extra large eggs
• 4 small, very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

• [Put the raisins and rum or bourbon in a smallish saucepan and bring to the boil.
• Remove from heat, cover, and leave for an hour if you can, or until the raisins have absorbed most of the liquid, then drain.] Do these steps if you use raisins.
  
• Preheat the oven to 325°F.
• Put the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium sized bowl and mix to combine.
• In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended.
• Beat in the eggs one at a time.
• Beat in the mashed bananas.
• Stir in the walnuts, [drained raisins,] 3 tablespoons dark rum, and vanilla extract.
• Add the flour mixture a third at a time, stirring well after each bit.
• Scrape mixture into loaf pan.
• Bake for 1 1/4 hours.
• Leave in the pan on a rack to cool.

About this recipe: I chose not to use raisins in this recipe, although bourbon or rum-soaked raisins are probably not bad. Instead I just added 3 tablespoons of rum to the batter to give it the flavor without said raisins. This is one recipe where I didn't cut any of the sugar since it's rather light in that respect. The batter was fairly simple to bring together. The only oddity was that you melt the butter and beat it together with your sugar as opposed to creaming those ingredients together. Other than that this recipe comes together like most others.

I used mini-bundt pans and was able to fill 3 of them with one batch. I baked them for only 20 minutes and they were done. Yay for mini-loaves.

The result: a banana-rich bread that is only slightly sweet. I liked it that way, but you may want to add 3/4 cup of sugar if you prefer a sweeter banana bread. The walnuts add a nice crunch to a very moist and tender cake.