Most folk know that our friend Barb’s Aunt Beezy has the best soda bread recipe.
And that is totally cool because:
1: I have the recipe (thanks, Barb!) and…
2: my own Aunt Buzz (no relation to Aunt Beezy, except for the fact that they were, obviously, wicked cool aunts) had probably the absolute best banana bread recipe.
And so, here it is…
One note: my Aunt Buzz loved entertaining and feeding folk, but kinda hated to cook, so I am a bit surprised that she went with a recipe that called for “sifting the flour, salt, baking powder, and soda three times.” One great advantage to considering a mid (last) century recipe today is that, a good wire 
whisking of the flour, salt, baking powder, and soda will do much the same thing as sifting, with a lot less muss and fuss.
INGREDIENTS
•3 ripe bananas
•1/4 cup chopped walnuts*
•1/4 cup butter, softened
•1/2 cup sugar
•1/2 cup milk
•2 eggs
•2 cups flour
•2 tsp baking powder
•1/2 tsp baking soda
•1/2 tsp salt
*If you can find them, black walnuts are awesome in this bread.
Heat your oven to 350º and apply cooking spray to a bread pan.
Cream the butter together with the sugar in a large mixing bowl and set aside.
Add the eggs, beating into the butter mixture after each addition, then add the peeled bananas and mix until smooth.
Beat in the milk and flour mixture, then stir in the nuts.
Transfer the batter to your prepared bread pan, then pop into the hot oven and bake for about one hour, until a toothpick or wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and set aside to cool for 15 minutes or so before turning the pan over and popping the bread out.
Enjoy.
This really is the best banana bread recipe I have found, but, no doubt much to my Aunt Buzz’s horror, I am considering “gorping it up” as she was wont to accuse me of, by adding a bit of allspice and mebbe some ground cloves and cinnamon to the next time I make it.
Go ahead and enjoy a slice or three with butter, plain cream cheese, or, one of my fave combinations (tho’ my husband gives me strange looks when I do it), a schmear of Jalapeño Cream Cheese Spread.