Tuesday - Cooking

Today is COOKING day. We have an abundant supply of not-so-nice-to-eat bananas (over-ripe) that are perfect for making Banana Bread.


I have my little helper, all the ingredients and a great old-fashioned recipe, so we are ready to make some mess and have fun.


Old Fashioned Banana Bread Recipe
(makes 1 loaf)

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed very ripe bananas

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350 F and grease loaf pan. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. In separate bowl, add shortening and sugar and cream together until light and fluffy, and beat in eggs one at a time. Add bananas and mix. Add one-quarter of dry mixture at a time, beating after each addition until batter is smooth. Add batter to loaf pan and bake 50 minutes. (I usually rotate my pans around about half way through so they don't burn on one edge).


My little helper greased the pans.


Poured the ingredients into the bowl.


Helped sift the flour.


Did some mixing (although all she really wanted to do was put her fingers in her ears!!).



Mashed up the bananas.



Did some more mixing (wasn't so scared of it the second time).



And helped pour the final mixture into the pans (we did a double mixture).


Then she helped set the timer.


This kind of reminds me of the "Little Red Hen" story - might be a good one to read while we wait for our bread. Smells SO good in here - making me hungry. Had better go check on it - have FUN!

YUM!