Streusel Banana Bread

With plenty of time on my hands, I have gone thru a stack of recipes that I had torn out of all my cooking magazines over the past few months.  I organized them and finally put them in the appropriate notebooks that I have ranging from appetizers, desserts, pastas, vegetables, etc..  And I bet like many of you, I have been trying a few new recipes.  This Streusel Banana Bread is a real winner!

STREUSEL BANANA BREAD

Streusel:
    6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature 
       (plus extra to grease the loaf pan)
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
1/2 salt
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Cake:
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
       1 teaspoon baking soda
   1/2 teaspoon salt
        1 stick unsalted butter, melted
        1 cup sugar
       2 large eggs, room temperature
       1 teaspoon vanilla extract
   1/3 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cup mashed, ripe bananas (approximately 3 bananas)

Preheat oven to 350.  Butter a 9" x 5" loaf pan.  With one piece of parchment paper (approximately 5" x 22"), line the bottom of the pan along with the ends, allowing at least 1" to extend the pan.

Streusel: 
In a bowl, mix the flour, brown sugar and salt together.  Stir in the butter and pecans until evenly moistened. 

Cake:
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour,  baking soda and salt.  In another bowl, whisk together the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and buttermilk, then stir in the bananas.  Mix this in with the flour mixture.  Do not over mix.

Spoon half of this mixture into the loaf pan.  Sprinkle half of the streusel mixture evenly over the batter.  Add the remaining batter and top with the rest of the streusel.

Bake for around 1 hour and 10 to 2o minutes.  The top will be golden brown.  If it browns to quickly, tent with tin foil.

Let cool for 30 minutes, then lift the bread out of the pan by grasping the parchment ends.  Let cool completely before slicing.

Bon Appetit!

PS:  Soon I will be posting another recipe, a new pasta dish!