A Perfect Loaf of Banana Bread

It was too cold to go out yesterday and I had a couple ugly bananas in the fruit bowl so I got out my favorite banana bread recipe -- the special one with nutmeg and rum. It has a wonderful sparkling sugar crust on top that makes it the best banana bread ever.

The recipe calls for a little dried coconut instead of nuts, but I forgot. However, the bread is still good without it and the kids will eat more of it without either of those things in it. My neighbor puts chocolate chips in hers and it's wonderful that way, too.

I always burn the banana bread. I even tried baking with the oven turned down 25 degrees, but it still got a bit dark on top and around the edges. If it was done on the inside, it was black somewhere on the outside. But, wow! Take a look at this beautiful loaf!

Thanks to Dad's instructions and the oven thermometer he bought me, I set the thermostat on the oven and baked (for the first time) a perfect loaf of banana bread. It turns out that the oven was more than 50 degrees hotter than it was supposed to be.

Now that it is fixed, I can't wait to see how cookies turn out! I'm ready to go on a holiday baking binge and this is just the start. I have in mind to make some Rolo Cookies, Snickerdoodles and Pfefferneusse. And definitely more banana bread!