How on earth could I miss such a sweet, little succulent recipe?!

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You have my sincerest apologies for the graininess of these pics...  vacay photography was sorely lacking.

It can't be true.  It simply cannot be that I have never shared my famous banana bread recipe with you!  How could I possibly have missed the opportunity to post the recipe that made me the baker I am today (on a good day)?!

My banana bread is what I was known for in high school.  It's better than anyone else's, including yours.  Sorry, but it's true.  And in high school, before my parents began the insane remodel that has consumed all our lives for the past 10 years (I kid you not), we had an amazing old gas stove/oven from the 50's, which used to make the tops of the loaves all chewy and sticky.  Heaven.  God, I miss that stove.

In fairness, though, I can't take all the credit.  Martha Stewart gave me the recipe.  But just to give you an idea of how many times I used it (and therefore sort of made it mine, in an illegial, plagiarizing kind of way), this is what the recipe page looks like, 10 years down the line:

Bear in mind, too, that this book stayed at the parents' house through college, when I made this recipe from an emailed copy roughly 2,864,903.56 times.

So I think I have some right to the recipe.  If nothing else, I have it memorized now (even if I do sometimes swap the butter and sugar measurements, to NO detriment.  Yum), and I get requests all the time.  If only I didn't like bananas so much, and could let a couple go black, I'd probably make it once a week.  As it is, I hadn't made it all year until our neighbor in San Francisco had surgery and I whipped out my trusty spatula to show concern where I show it best: through baked goods.

I made the neighbors a loaf, and used the leftover dribbles to make the teeniest mini-muffins ever in the world.  This picture is terrible, but I have to show you how adorable they looked in the oven:

All puffing up around their pecans!  So cuuute.  And delicious, by the way.  So without further ado, I'll share the recipe (now go out into the world and pretend it's yours)!

Banana Bread
From Martha Stewart

Preheat oven to 350°F, butter a 9X5X3" loaf pan.

With an electric mixer, cream until light and fluffy:
     1/4 Pound (1 stick butter), room temp
     1 c sugar

Add, beating well:
     2 eggs

Sift together (yeah, right!), then add:
     1 1/2 c flour
     1 t baking soda
     1 t salt

Add, stirring well:

     1 c mashed very ripe bananas
     1/2 c sour cream
     1 t vanilla extract

Stir in:

     1/2 c chopped walnuts or pecans
 

Pour into the prepared pan. Bake 1 hour, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Turn out onto a rack to cool.  (Just try to keep yourself from eating it until it's cool.  When you fail, and burn your tongue, I find a glass of cold milk eases the delicious pain.)