Banana Bread Food Gifts

I love this time of year. The snow falling softly from the sky, the festive lights and the Christmas music. These things combined can put me in a gift-giving mood. My problem is that I HATE shopping. So how can I fill my gift-giving list without having to worry and wonder what someone needs or likes? That's when I turn to homemade food gifts.

Today I'm focusing on banana bread. Banana bread baked in mini loaf pans make great holiday gifts. Lets get started!

First - gather all your ingredients. 

You will need butter, eggs, flour, baking soda, salt, brown sugar and bananas, about 5 of them. Now be sure to use overripe bananas. Don't buy ripe and overripe bananas and forget to tell your husband which ones were ok to eat and which ones to save for your bread. If you forget to tell him then all bets are on him eating the bananas meant for bread. Yup! Happened here.

Preheat your oven

Grease your pans. This recipe calls for a 9" x 5" loaf pan but since I was making mini loaves I greased 3 of them 

and threw in a wide mouth pint jar for giggles. I saw it on Pinterest and was curious on how it would turn out. I'm pretty excited to see the results.

Now...let's get cooking. Recipe will be at the end of this post.

Add brown sugar and butter to a large bowl

Cream together with a mixer until well combined

Add eggs

And mashed bananas

Stir until well blended.

In a separate bowl (not pictured) I combined the flour, salt and baking soda. 

Add flour mixture to wet mixture a little at a time. 

Stir until just moistened after each addition of the flour mixture. Make sure no white flour is showing. Never mind me - I forgot to get a picture of that.

Pour into prepared pans. Toss in the oven. The recipe directions say to bake until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, but I like it when there is a little crumb left on the pick. The bread will continue to bake a little when removed from the hot oven so a little crumb is ok and will ensure the bread is not overcooked. 

And here you have Banana Bread. Looks good.

Sorry, but I didn't keep track of how long it took to bake the mini loaves but I know for certain it didn't take the full amount of time the original recipe called for. Just use the toothpick method and you'll be golden!

Let bread cool for 10 minutes before releasing from pans to cool on a wire rack. Once again - silly me - I didn't take a picture of that step.

And here's the finished mason jar method. Yay!

It looks like the mason jar method is a keeper. I boiled a canning lid and ring for two minutes before placing on the jar. The heat from the bread sealed the jar.

After the jar sealed I removed the canning ring (keep the canning lid on) and added a white plastic lid over the canning lid. I've read it keeps good for one week with this method.

There are many ways to wrap your mini banana bread loaves for gift giving. I started by shopping in my home for wrapping accessories. You would be quite surprised what you have gathered and stashed away over the years. 

Here is what I found by searching my closets and basement.

• A brown paper lunch sack
• Raffia I had used on my Christmas tree years ago
• Jingle bells I had used for a bridal shower
• Colored card stock 
• Cute tissue paper
• And a little computer creativity for the tag
• Decorative edge scissors to cut the lunch sack
• Plastic wrap to keep the bread fresh

Anything goes - just have fun with it.

After wrapping the bread I placed them back in the pans I baked them in. I got these cute little pans at Michaels Craft Store.

You can then wrap the pan and bread together with a clear cellophane bag tied with ribbon or tuck neatly in a box surrounded by colorful coordinating tissue paper like I did. Like I said - anything goes.

I hope you decided to give your friends and family food gifts for the holiday. The best way to someone's heart is through their stomach! They're sure to love whatever your little hands decide to make for them.

Now on to the recipe

Banana Banana Bread

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 1/3 cups mashed overripe bananas

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

3. Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

Recipe is from Allrecipes