Hello friends!  We missed you.  Last week we took a weekend trip to Nashville to see our son play in a hockey tournament.  Although the hockey did not turn out like we had hoped, we had a lot of fun visiting Nashville.  We ate at a few cute little restaurants and ventured down to Broadway on Saturday night with our friends, Patrick and Molly, to take in a little live music and dancing at Tootsie’s and The Stage!  The live music was amazing and we had a blast.

This week we are sharing our Zaya Banana Bread recipe with you.  When the bananas in our fruit bowl start to turn brown, no one in the family will touch them.  Rhonda likes to save them for banana bread.  One day she was looking at the browned bananas and thinking about how well bananas and rum go together — like in our Zaya Bananas Foster!  She got the inspiration to add some rum to banana bread.  She was feeling pretty proud of herself for her creativity until she googled rum banana bread and realized that many others had beaten her to this wonderful idea.  Oh well… We decided on a recipe from pastryaffair.com.  The prose and photography on this blog definitely have us beat.  If you have time, go check it out.  After you make some Zaya Banana Bread, of course.

Can’t you just smell the delicious hot banana bread looking at this picture?

Before we share the recipe with you there is one little thing that you might want to know about this bread.  Try to resist the temptation to eat all of it when you first bring it out of the oven.  We know.  It’s sooo hard, right?  Who can resist warm banana bread with just a pat of melting butter?  This bread actually gets better the longer it sits.  The flavor of the rum is more pronounced on the second and third days, and Zaya has the perfect rich flavor to pair with this recipe. Yummo!  (You can still warm in up in the microwave if you like it hot.)  Make sure to keep it in a sealed container if you have some leftover. We put ours in the refrigerator to keep it fresh.

Zaya Banana Bread

• 1/2 cup Kerrygold butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar packed
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 large ripe bananas mashed
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup dark rum (We used Zaya Rum.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Spray loaf pan with cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well between additions.  Beat in the vanilla extract and mashed bananas until fully incorporated.  Mix in the flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Stir in the rum.

Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake 55-65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool loaf pan for 10 minutes before removing and transferring to a cooling rack.

This is a great recipe to package for holiday goody baskets, or to serve at a holiday brunch.  Are you having family in town for Thanksgiving?  Make some Zaya Banana Bread to have on hand to serve as a mid-morning or afternoon snack with a warm cup of coffee.

Let us know if you try out our recipes.  We love to get feedback.  Thank you to all that have shared our blog with family and friends.  Blind Pig Nation continues to grow!  Haven’t shared yet? Follow us on Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/theblindpigblog/! Use the sharing buttons below.

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