Spelt Banana Bread

Today my preschooler and I made spelt banana bread. I thought I’d try using the spelt in my favorite banana bread recipe, since the last time I tried doing spelt (yeast) bread it was a spectacular failure. I basically ended up with a giant bread bowl, it fell so much. It tasted good, though. I really like spelt, so that’s good news.

My little daughter loves to help me cook. Not that I do it all that often, but when I do, she is right there wanting to do every bit of it herself. Maybe she’ll grow up to be Martha Stewart or Rachael Ray or somebody like that. And she’ll have her dad to thank for it. But I do make banana bread sometimes, so it’s not like I don’t contribute to her baking education.

She is especially good at stirring up the ingredients. I hardly helped her this time.  I measured them, and that was about it. It took all of her self-control to even let me measure them, too. That’s how badly she wants to do everything herself. Sometimes I go into the kitchen and find interesting “soup” that she has made for me. The last one consisted of pickle juice, unpopped popcorn kernels and olives. Maybe she won’t be Martha Stewart, after all.

But she does know the best part of baking is licking the spoon after the bread is in the oven! This is something we don’t take lightly in our kitchen.

The spelt banana bread worked out pretty well! Here’s the recipe I used (and if you don’t want to use spelt flour, it works wonderfully with the good old all-purpose kind, too):

Spelt Banana Bread

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups spelt flour

Preheat oven to 350.  With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla.  Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in.  Add the flour and mix.  Pour mixture into a buttered 4×8 loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes.