Tuesday afternoon, I was struck with unshakable need to bake a loaf of banana bread. My favorite, basic, go-to recipe generally is the Quick Banana Bread recipe from Joy of Cooking. I've made this loaf so many times that my edition of Joy naturally opens to that page when left to it's own devices. This time though, I wanted something slightly different, something sweetened with maple syrup and including a mass of toasted and chopped pecans. I googled around a bit, until I hit upon this recipe. Taking it as a starting place, I adapted a bit and I think I hit on a winner. It has a very smooth, soft texture that is not too sweet or too bland. I'm afraid my old recipe may have been supplanted by this one! If you want to try it out, the recipe is after the jump. Banana maple pecan bread
Adapted from allrecipes.com

½ cup butter, softened
½ cup maple syrup
1 egg
2 ripe bananas
½ teaspoon maple extract (or vanilla if you don't have maple)
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
3 tablespoons buttermilk
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped, toasted pecans
2 tablespoons tubinado (or other dusting) sugar


DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan.

In a large bowl, mix the butter and maple syrup. Beat in the egg and bananas, leaving a few small chunks. Stir in the maple extract, nutmeg and buttermilk.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and baking powder, and stir into the banana mixture just until moistened. Finally stir in pecans just until they are combined. Transfer to the prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle sugar evenly over the batter.

Bake 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean.