Roasted banana bread

Every once and a while, I like to visit the bookstore and buy a bunch of cooking magazines, not necessarily to cook every recipe, but to keep up on all the latest food trends. I especially enjoy the Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications. The photography and design are so beautiful and fun, even if the recipes tend to be a little above my cooking skill level. (But most everything is!)

I ended up buying a copy of the latest BH&G publication, "Cook's Secrets."  And, boy, is this issue a keeper.  I recommend you pick up a copy if you find one at the store.  Lots of basic recipes for a so-so cook like me.

The very night I brought the magazine home, I broke out my mixer and made the roasted banana bread recipe.  Unfortunately, I didn't remember to take a photo of the finished banana bread (but I'm sure you know what banana bread looks like).  I did snap a few photos of the roasted bananas as they came out of the oven.  Yes, they are supposed to look black!

The recipe says the benefits of roasting the bananas are that you can use bananas at any stage of ripeness, and you don't have to mash the bananas, just mix them in. Here's a video I found from BH&G that explains the roasting banana process and how to make the bread.  If you try it, let me know how it works for you.

Cranberry Banana Bread

I saw cranberries on sale for the first time last week, and I couldn't resist bringing a bag home, even though I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them.  I've been craving banana bread, so I baked up this cranberry banana bread recipe from Joy the Baker. 

 

I love that this recipe is so easy to make.  I didn't even need to break out a mixer.  The banana flavor is perfect, plus there's a tart "pop" from the cranberries. I highly recommend this recipe if you're like me and can't resist those cute little cranberries in the produce aisle.

Banana blueberry bread

Don't the blueberries look fluorescent in this picture?  Don't know how that happened.

I like to buy fresh blueberries whenever they are sale in the summer.  I usually bake up a batch of blueberry muffins, but I also had some over-ripe bananas that I needed to use up.  So I found a recipe for blueberry banana bread from Taste of Home, my go-to source for baking recipes.
 

The recipe calls for shortening, which I typically don't like to bake with because I prefer real butter (for the flavor) or canola oil (a healthier alternative).  But I didn't have time to tinker with the recipe, so I just made it as is. The bread baked up just fine, and I enjoyed it.  My only compliant is that it was a little bland.  For some reason, I couldn't really taste the blueberries, which was disappointing.  In the future, I'll probably try to look for another recipe if I ever find myself with blueberries and bananas that need to be used up.

If you know of a good blueberry bread recipe, please share.  I would love to try it sometime.