Variation on a family recipe: whole wheat banana bread with cranberries

My mom once gave me her banana bread recipe and since then this is how I use the bananas that get too dark and mushy to be eaten as is. And for years, it has been the only baking I have done. I don’t know where my mom got the recipe in the first place, it might come from a magazine or a book, but the important thing is that it works all the time. Over the years however, I have developed many variations using ingredients that were sitting on my cupboard: coconut and pineapple banana bread, lemon banana bread, chocolate chip banana bread, etc. And last weekend, it is fresh cranberries that I added to my loaf.

The recipe is extremely simple and never fails.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cup of flour (I now use whole wheat flour)
• 2 tea spoon of baking powder
• 1 tea spoon of salt
• ¼ cup of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup of vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup of corn syrup
• 1 cup of crushed ripe bananas (about 2 or 3 bananas)
• ½ cup of chopped nuts (optional)

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together. In another bowl, mix all the other ingredients. Combine the dry and the liquid mixtures. When everything looks wet (do not over-mix), pour everything in a greased cake tin and cook for about one hour at 350F.

In my last version, I replaced the nuts for cranberries and added some oatmeal flakes and brown sugar on the dough to make a nice crust. I served it with a cranberry sauce made using the leftover cranberries.