Memorial Day: Peach stuffed banana bread

For Memorial Day I was planning on making a peach cobbler for dessert, I had a can of peaches in the pantry and all the necessary ingredients so it seemed like a no brainer.  The day before the holiday I noticed that we had some bananas that were getting really brown and that would need to be used soon.  Lately I've been making banana bread from my late Mamaw's recipe so that would be a good way to use the bananas.  But did I want to have two sweet things needing to be eaten at the same time?  The solution was to combine them and make a peach stuffed banana bread.

The banana bread recipe is pretty simple, but you need to do things in a particular order for it to come out right.  The ingredients are:

3-4 very ripe bananas
1 ts baking soda
3/4 ts baking powder
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 ts vanilla
2 cups AP flour (divided, I use the scoop and level method for measuring)
1 stick butter, melted

First the oven is preheated to 350 and a large loaf pan is prepared by cutting out a piece of parchment paper to fit the bottom.  The pan is sprayed with release spray, the parchment put in the bottom and sprayed again.

Now that that's done it's time to make the batter.  The bananas are peeled and put in the bowl of a stand mixer, the baking soda is added and the mixer turned on, mixing the bananas with the baking soda seems to help them break down.  With the mixer still on the baking powder is added, followed by the sugar, eggs and vanilla.  The speed is turned down to low and 1 cup of flour is added, then the melted butter and finally the final cup of flour.  Only mix until the batter is smooth and you don't see and lumps of flour.  Quickly pour the batter in to the prepared pan.  For plain banana bread you can just bake for 60 minutes, then let cool in the pan for around 10 minutes before turning out and letting cool on a rack.

This time I decided to stuff the banana bread with peaches.  I poured a can of peach pieces in light syrup in to a colander and reserved the liquid.  The peach pieces were pushed in to the batter, trying to keep them from touching the sides of the loaf pan.  Once all the peaches were in place the banana bread was put in the preheated oven to bake, since I had never done this before I added 10 minutes to the normal bake time for a total of 70 minutes.

Here is the result.  The extra baking time was definitely needed to allow the batter around the peaches to cook.  After the oven was turned off I left the loaf pan in there for 10 minutes with the door open to help drive off a little more moisture, then allowed the bread to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before being removed.  It was a little more difficult to turn this out of the pan since I didn't want to mess up the peaches on top but with a little extra care it came out just fine.  I didn't know if the flavors of bananas and peaches would mesh, but they're actually pretty good together!  The peach stuffed banana bread was served with a whipped cream made with heavy cream, powdered sugar and some of the reserved syrup from the can of peaches and some vanilla frozen custard.

Mamaw Durkin's Banana Bread

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts about my cooking of recipes left to me by my grandmother, Ola Durkin (a.k.a. Mamaw).  The first recipe is for her famous banana bread.  The recipe is as follows:

1 stick butter
1 cup sugar

3-4 ripe bananas
1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

2 cups AP flour
1/2 - 3/4 tsp baking powder
pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 325.
Cream together the butter and sugar.
Mash the bananas with the baking soda, add to the butter/sugar mixture and mix in.
Add the eggs one at a time along with the vanilla, incorporating completely between additions.
Add the flour mixture half at a time, mixing in completely after each addition.
Pour the batter in to a greased loaf pan, smooth out the top with a spoon or off-set spatula and bake at 325 degrees for about an hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Allow the loaf to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then loosen the sides with a knife and turn out to cool on a wire rack.

Mamaw usually gave us a thick slice of the banana bread with a little margarine spread on one side.  This is VERY good toasted!