Friday Friend Recipe #48: Banana Bars

Friday Friend Recipe #48:  Banana Bars

Making my way thru my Friday Friend Cookbook, one recipe at a time.

What is the Friday Friend cookbook:   I have about 50 of my closest friends and family on an e-mail forum which I called the Friday Friends (from all over the county).  At first, most of them didn't know each other, (they knew me) but over the past 15 years, we've answered and shared silly--and serious---questions,  exchanged Secret Santa Christmas gifts,  had a dieting contest in which we paid a $1 a week and that money went to a scholarship fund for a Friday Friends son's memorial scholarship, and we went on a great vacation for my 52 birthday.

AND,  we contributed recipes for a cookbook.

Which brings me to this... recipe #48

April's 

Banana Bars

This is a great bar to make when you have really ripe bananas.
Banana bread?  Or Banana Bars?  With cream cheese frosting?!
April is from the south and she makes banana deserts all the time.
This is one of her best.

Banana Bars

April Cain

Winnemucca, NV

1/2 cup soft butter

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas 

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, vanilla and bananas and mix well.

Add the rest of ingredients and mix together well.

Pour into a greased  15x10x1 baking pan.

Bake at  350F for 15 mintues.

Let cook and frost with cream cheese frosting.

Frosting:

1/2 cup soft butter

8oz cream cheese

4 cups powdered sugar

2 tsp vanilla

Blend until smooth. Frost bars and cut into squares to serve.

Woo Hoo!

April makes her debut appearance in the Friday  Friend Cookbook!!
But not the first time on my blog.
I have  her tagged in 10 posts.
TEN POSTS
Count 'em here!  (or just click on them to see)

April is....
host of movie night

host of beer tasting night

hillbilly cabin co-host of the Traveling Cocktail Party  (remind me to write a post about that sometime)
here below is the spread they  put out for the hillbilly appetizers

Kind host of our day on the water in a pontoon boat
Among many other things.

A couple of things come to mind as I write this--
1)  April is kind
2)  April likes to host parties

BUT---April has a wild side!!
(a country mile wild!)

She's a motorcycle mama!!

And she loves 4-wheelers!

(no helmet?)

boating without a life jacket!!

(I told you---WILD SIDE!!)

She is also a cooking friend--
We've taken a Cajun cooking class together and also went to a Taste of Home event and now, now she is a founding member of our Cooking Club!

Those are the many faces of April!

Bananas and Cream Pound Cake

Yesterday was a great day!  I spent most of it cooking,  a little bit reading, went to church and had supper with part of my family.  What could be better?  (only more of my family!)

I wanted to try out this banana desert---Bananas and Cream Pound Cake--that I found on the Taste of Home site.  (click on that link to see how good it can really look!)

The dessert was great, my pictures? Well, they don't look anything like the ones on the Taste of Home site.   Go figure?  I never said I was a photographer!
My pudding layer was creamier than it should have been---like falling down over the pound cake and bananas.  
Granted, it doesn't make for a great photograph, BUT it does make for a mouthful of wonderful.
And that's the whole point, isn't it?

The pound cake layer was so good---one can never go wrong with pound cake.  I love pound cake.  Layer that with some bananas and put pudding on top!
Everyone loved it.
Can't wait to share it with my friend April, who brings Southern 'banana pudding' to all kinds of gatherings.
Some of us Westerners do not appreciate banana pudding type of desserts as much as we should---but I know she will.

Oh....and the pillow cases, which say Mr. and Mrs.?   I found them in an old cedar chest while cleaning out at my parents house a few weeks ago.   I am pretty sure they were embroidered by my great-grandmother for my mother's wedding gift.  I am going to put them on the pillows in my guest room.

And let no one lay their heads upon them EVER. (laughing)  Embroidered things start to come apart once they are  used often.  Have you ever noticed that?  Washing, etc.  Just causes them to un-embroider.
Does anyone hand embroider anymore?  Is it an old-fashioned thing? 
When I was little we would spend our money on embroider hoops that you could get at the local drugstore.   It was the 'thing' to do, when I was 9 years old. 
I have never done it since.  You?


Back to the dessert---the only  thing I might ever do different is use a banana pudding in lieu of the French Vanilla---just to make it more banana tasting.  Maybe....cuz it's good just as it is.

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. In another bowl, mix the flour, salt and baking soda; add to the creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating after each addition just until combined.
2. Transfer to a greased and floured 9-in. x 5-in. loaf pan. Bake at 325° for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
3. In a small bowl, whisk milk and pudding mix for 2 minutes. Let stand for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, beat cream cheese and condensed milk until smooth; fold in pudding. Fold in 3-1/2 cups whipped topping.
4. Cut cake into eight slices; arrange on bottom of an ungreased 13-in. x 9-in. dish, trimming to fit as necessary. Slice bananas; arrange over cake. Spread pudding mixture over top. Refrigerate, covered, for 3 hours. Serve with remaining whipped topping. Yield: 15 servings.

Picture courtesy of Taste of Home

(but it should really look like this)

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened

• 1-1/2 cups sugar

• 3 eggs

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 cup buttermilk

• LAYERS:

• 2 cups 2% milk

• 1 package (3.4 ounces) instant French vanilla pudding mix

• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened

• 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk

• 1 package (12 ounces) frozen whipped topping, thawed, divided

• 5 medium ripe bananas

• 
  
• 
  

Banana Bars

I wasn't kidding ( a few days ago when I said I was going to post about them)--here are Banana Bars!
A quick recipe from  my friend April.

She's the one we went on the boat with last summer.
She's the one who has the movie nights in her back yard each summer. 
She's the one who we went out in the desert with in May.  (oops never blogged about this)
She's the one who threw a great red-necked cocktail party at my 52nd birthday at Wallowa Lake.

Holy cow!  She's the one!!  Too bad I already have the Handyman.

If you like banana bread, banana cake, banana pudding (mmmmm....) you will like these little banana snack bars.  You can't really go wrong with banana flavored anything.
And these are really easy and quick. 

Banana Bars

Cream together:
1/2 cup soft butter
2 cups sugar

Add to sugar mixture and blend well:
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas

Sift together  and add to batter.  Mix well:
2 cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt

Pour into a greased  15x10x1 baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes at  350 degrees.  Let cool and frost.

Beat together until creamy:
1/2 cup softened butter
8 oz cream cheese

Mix into cream cheese and butter. Blend well. Frost bars:
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Banana Bread (again)

Yes, I've already posted an banana bread recipe--but it wasn't mine.   It was someone else's that I wanted to make a couple of years ago, and while it was very good, it wasn't what I usually make.
Since Saturday was National Banana Bread day and I had very (VERY) dark bananas, I decided to make some and  I thought I might as well post it.  It's the same banana bread that my mom makes--the one we have made for years.

Let me back track just a little bit here--because I've said this before--but it seems to me, most of the time, that people who like to cook don't always have a signature recipe because we like to try new things constantly.  
People who don't really like to cook, find a recipe that they like and stick with it for the rest of their lives.  And then they become famous for them.
I resent them for that---I'm just sayin'.  I mean, some of my best friends who hate to cook, get asked to bring that 'special dish' all the time.  Then they look at me and think  'who the hell knows what she'll bring!'  (ahhh, but they like it because it's always good!  Well, most of the time.  I am brave enough to bring a never before made dish to someone's home.  Turns out great--99% of the time)

Okay, now I'm off my rant!   My point?  That maybe I should stick with the tried and true also, because I know it's always going to be a hit.
Speaking of hits....
This is the banana bread that my mom has made for years, as have I.  It's a good moist banana bread. I gave half to my son and his wife, because otherwise, the  Handyman and I would have eaten ALL OF IT.  And believe me, we don't need to be doing that.   It is on a splattered old recipe card  (You could see it if you followed the Friday Friends on facebook), but that just  means it's been used and loved, right?

Banana Bread
from Debbie's mom

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sour milk  (we just do the homemade buttermilk thing--milk with a splash of lemon juice in it and let it set for about  5 minutes)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup mashed bananas

Combine ingredients in order given, adding bananas last.  Bake in a loaf pan at 350 for an hour.

That's it in a nutshell.  
But...be sure and mix the sugar and shortening before adding eggs, then mix again, then add the dry ingredients.  
I had to figure that out for myself when I was very young!
And grease and flour the loaf pan, or the two loaf pans
You can add nuts if you want to.  I like them, but no one else does.

Coming Clean and Banana Cake

I am coming clean.  (sigh)

Here goes....

I've been very vocal about my position on  e-books.  I don't like them.  I like real books. I like how they feel and smell and sound (flipping the pages....) I don't want the world to become so techno that is looses sight of really good stuff!! I don't want libraries without books!! I love book cover art. I love when people have bookshelves all over their homes. You can learn so much about someone from their bookshelves! And then there was that issue with Amazon telling Macmillan (or some publisher that I can't recall at the moment) what price they could charge, and that publisher said "Amazon, you're not the boss of me!" So Amazon boycotted all of that publishers books, which means you and I were forced (if we had a Kindle) to boycott them too (very complicated issue).
I like books.
I even took the pledge to read the written word --I used to have the badge on my blog. 

But--but--but my mom got me a Kindle for Christmas.

I didn't want a Kindle.   I like books.  And bookshelves.  And bookstores with rows and rows and rows of books.
So when I opened it on  Christmas morning, and sat there dumbfounded  (my mother had also suggested only to exchange very small gifts this year--she's a sneaker, that one!!), my daughter-in-law, Sadie  knew how I felt and she began telling me all the positives about electronic readers.  For the record, she doesn't own one either, she kind of felt the same way I did. Either that, or they just ended  7 years of college and grad school, had preemie twins, who spent 6 weeks in the NICU, and decided that  the purchase of an e-reader could wait a while.  
But I digress... She was really selling that product to me, because she could tell I was dumbfounded as to why my mom would get me one, when I didn't want one.  But slowly as I sat there, watching my grandchildren open their gifts, a feeling of gratitude came over me--it was a gift, after all, a heart felt gift.   And my mom was so excited  (I talked to her on the phone), how can one not be thankful.

(my dad, on the other hand said this:
My dad.... "do you like it?" Me..."yes, I do".....dad..."Well, you're not a real reader then! I told your mother, real readers like books!" (he's a real reader... I just think he's jealous now. LOL )


So, I was okay with it.... I had a new gadget that I might use once in a while, when I traveled.   I'm not much for gadgets. But I got a nice gift. I was okay. Or trying to talk myself into being okay when  the Handyman leaned  over to me and said   " You don't want to be one of those old curmudgeons who don't like and won't use anything new fangled, do you?"



HELL NO, I DON'T WANT TO BE ONE OF THOSE OLD CURMUDGEONS!!!


That's always been a pet peeve of mine...old cranky people who won't flow with (accept )the times, won't learn anything new..... and there I was....on the verge of becoming one.

~whew~ Just goes to show....your mom can teach you lessons in life for as long as you live!!

And guess what?   I LOVE MY KINDLE!!  I.  Love. It.   While I still do love a good paper book, there is something to be said for the conveinence of having access to practically any book I want, at any time I want it, or any newspaper or magazine, or....I could go on and on.  That and I can make the print as big as I need it to be  ~grins~.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my confession...my  "comming clean" if you will.

**********************************************************

Even tho I read 2 books right away on my new Kindle  (Pillars of the Earth and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand--both very good, although very different from each other.  I would recomend them both),   I wanted to catch up with some of my favorite mystery characters this cold winter month  (In the Bleak Midwinter) and I have a bunch of them in my TBR pile, so I grabbed a Laura Lippman book to see what Tess Monaghan was up to.

In Big Trouble is only the 4th in the series--I  like to savour, okay--but I love Tess so much!  I love reading about 'her' Baltimore.  I love seeing how she solves the muders and how her relationsip with her boyfriend grows.  As I said, I have catching up to do... a lot of catching up, as in 10 books, (TEN BOOKS) since the Girl in the Green Raincoat just came out (it's the 14th in the series) and I am seeing lots of reviews on it in the blogging world.    I need a lot more  bleak midwinter days!  Days to curl up with my book AND....some homemade banana cake.

Yes, that's right---I made banana cake.  And then proceeded to eat half of it over the next 3 days.  The Handyman ate the other half.  It WAS NOT a 13x9 pan, but rather an 8x8 pan.  It was a snack cake!   And I snacked--more than I should have.

If you recall, I decided not to do any challenges this year, any blogging challenges that is  (except Cookbook Sundays--which is once a month and helps me with my own personal goal of working thru my cookbook collection).

But on Sunday, as I was looking thru my cookbook notebook (which consists of recipes from other people and/or magazines, I've collected over the years), I started thinking maybe I should just work my way thru my own  recipe collection notebook(s).   But then I thought better of it.   Or did I?   I can't make up my mind.

But I dont' want to bore you with my decision making process, so I will just leave you with this recipe for banana snack cake....the one I ate half a pan of while reading a great mystery novel.  But not all in one sitting, mind you.  It was  a 3-day read.

Banana Snack Cake

(from my friend Kathy Calkins in Grapevine, Texas.  It was scribbled down years ago on an old piece of computer paper--that old paper that was fed from holes in the side. Do you remember that? The continuous feed paper?)

We like this cake because it's just a bit denser than banana bread.  I don't frost it.  I just bake it and it's moist and thick and good, so we all grab a piece as we walk by and before you know it--it's all gone!

1/2 cup shortening

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

3/4 tsp soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup sour milk

3 mashed bananas

Mix first 4 ingredients, then add the next 4 ingredients.  Mix.  Add, alternating sour milk and bananas.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes in an 8" greased and floured pan.

 

Banana Bread

We all have our little quirks, right? Here is one of mine.

I will spend weeks on having a "find just the right (fill in the blank) recipe".


For instance I once spent about two months making a different apple pie recipe every weekend. I wanted to find "just the right one", so I subjected my family to this, weekend after weekend, for about 7 or 8 weeks in a row. (at the same time, my friend Sally was trying to find the perfect rice pudding ). I made apple pies with cinnamon and nutmeg, with a crunch topping, with brown sugar, with nuts... My family never complained. Nor did they when I was trying to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. They are troopers I tell ya...troopers, being forced to eat my samples.


The downfall to this is that I have no signature dish that people request me to bring to potlucks, dinner parties, etc.
My friend Shelly makes 3 things. We can always count on one of those three things being brought to a backyard bbq or get-together. But she makes them well, and we all love them. They are her signature dishes...the ones we all crave and rave about.
Me, on the other hand....I will even make a dish I've never made before to take and share. And if someone were to ask me to "bring your apple pie, it's so good," I would have no idea which one they were talking about.


My daughter-in-law Sadie once said to me, that she really liked that thing I made, with noodles.
I've been haunted about that for years.....trying to remember what noodle thing it was. I've made other noodle things for her since then, but have never recreated "the" noodle thing.


For a while I was also trying different banana bread recipes. The trouble is, they are all good, so how does one pick "just the right one"? Well you can't. But I did make one the other night and I thought I would share it.


I was reading this book, "Being Dead is no Excuse, the Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral" by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays. It's full of funny little essays on Southern etiquette and recipes. In it there was one for banana bread. Now, I don't just make any banana bread I come across anymore, but this one intrigued me because it didn't have any salt in the recipe. I thought salt was one of those "chemical" ingredients you need to do any baking? Well, there was none there. So I decided to make it. And guess what? It was really good.
I would make it again, although I'm still not sure "it's the one."




Mother's Banana Nut Bread

4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons soda
1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
6 ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups chopped nuts


Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.


Sift the flour, baking powder and soda together.
Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and mix. Add the flour mixture to the butter and sugar and egg mixture.
Fold in the mashed bananas.
Lightly flour the nuts and fold them into the batter.


Bake for 1 hour in 2 buttered Loaf pans. Glaze if desired.


Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
4-6 tablespoons milk
In a small bowl, blend the above ingredients until smooth. Remove the bread from the pan and spoon the glaze over it.

Banana Cookies

I am almost embarrassed to tell you how many over-ripe bananas I throw away. Sometimes I try to save them....I will freeze them in zip-loc bags, but even then my banana recipe repertoire is not very big.....
Banana bread
banana cake
banana cookies.
So, I tend to throw out a lot.

Well, I guess there is the popular Banana Split and bananas on my cereal....but this post is about Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies.

This is a fast to whip up cookie dough, very moist and soft, a cake-like cookie, which is my husband's favorite type of cookie.
The recipe was given to me by an original Friday Friend*, Susie.

Susie and I and our husbands lived in a duplex when we were first married, they on one side, us on the other, about 30 years ago. It was just like Lucy and Ricky, Ethel and Fred. Really, it was....
picture this if you will.... the two of us, Susie and myself, trying to rescue a mouse that had gotten in to her house. She wanted to set it free, I was helping her. Our husbands just looked on laughing. It's very hard to capture a mouse--alive. She had a soft heart then, and she still does to this day. I've become hardened over the years...give me a mousetrap any day. LOL
But we are still great friends, Godmothers to each other's children.
She always said she wasn't/isn't' a cook, but she has a few great cookie recipes that I still make!

Banana cookies

3/4 cups shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
1 3/4 cups quick-cooking oatmeal
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp soda
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup mashed bananas
1 6oz pkg chocolate chips

Cream shortening, sugar and egg. Add bananas, mix well.
Add dry ingredients and mix well. Stir in chocolate chips.
Bake at 350 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

enjoy with a glass of milk!

*Original Friday Friend? What? Who? huh?
I've moved often during my 31 year marriage, and collected good friends along the way. One day about 10 years ago, I sent an e-mail (this was before blogs...or before I knew about them anyway ) to all my close friends and female relatives, about 50 of them, and asked "what's for supper?"
Then when I cut and compiled and pasted and sent everybody's answer out to all of them. This was on a Friday.
From that, it because a forum, and even tho I am the only connecting link, they've become friends--albeit, Internet friends--over the years. We've had divorces, marriages, children born, children die, graduations, anniversaries, milestones, job losses, career moves, grand babies, sickness, happiness and lots and lots of eating/cooking and laughing.
So my blog....named in honor of our e-mail forum, the Friday Friends. I talk about them all the time... in my blogs. You might get to know them too.