D & P Banana Bread

1/2  cup (1 stick) butter          
1  cup sugar
2 eggs
1  Tbsp. vanilla
1  cup mashed bananas (about 3 bananas)
1/2 cup low fat buttermilk (or substitute 1/4 cup milk and 1/4 cup sour cream)
2  cups sifted flour
1  tsp. baking soda
1  tsp. salt
1  cup nuts, chopped

Cream butter and sugar together.  Beat in eggs, then bananas, milk, and vanilla.  Sift together dry ingredients except nuts.  Add to banana mixture, stirring lightly to mix.  Fold in nuts.  Pour into greased and floured 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.   The pan should be about three-fourths full.  (Makes one large loaf, two smaller loaves or four mini loaves.) Bake at 350 degrees about 60 minutes, less for smaller loaves, until pick inserted in center comes out clean.

The flour can be white or whole wheat or a combination.  Oat bran or oatmeal pulverized in food processor is also good as part of the flour.  The sugar can be all white or half white and half brown.  (For brown, pack when measuring).  The riper the bananas, the better.  In fact, when bananas get riper than you care to eat, store them in the freezer, peel and all.  When ready to use, thaw until just soft, peel and pour into cup to measure.  They look really yucky, but the banana bread they make is moist, sweet and strong in banana flavor.

Roberta (Durden) Powell and I developed this banana bread recipe when we both worked at Douglass & Powell, so D & P means either Durden and Piotrowski or Douglass & Powell.  We tried every recipe we could find because the banana trees in the back yard at the office on Park Avenue during one long, long warm summer bore 18 stalks of small, not very sweet bananas and we were moved to create something with them.  This recipe was the ultimate winner.  Some years later my aunt Opal Dietrich gave me Grandma Martin's recipe.  I was amazed to discover that it is the same recipe except Grandma used 3 Tbsp. sour milk instead of 1/2 cup buttermilk and 1 tsp. soda rather than 2 tsp.