Holiday Banana Bread

This ever-popular tea bread is made Christmas-pretty with the addition of colorful candied fruits. This bread may look like a fruit cake but the taste is pure banana-delicious! I like to use candied red and green cherries and yellow candied pineapple, which I coarsely chop, in this bread for the prettiest look.

• Ready In: 1 hr 20 mins
• Yields: 1 loaf

Ingredients

• 1 3⁄4 cups flour
• 2 3⁄4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1  teaspoon salt
• 1⁄2 cup  chopped walnuts
• 1  cup  mixed candied fruit, finely chopped
• 1⁄4 cup  fresh raisins
• 5 1⁄3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
• 2⁄3 cup sugar
• 2  eggs
• 2  cups bananas, mashed (about 3 or 4 very ripe bananas)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Thoroughly grease a 5 x 9-inch loaf pan.
2. Sift the flour, measure, and sift with the baking powder and salt onto a piee of waxed paper. Add the nuts, raisins and candied fruits, and mix until well coated with the flour.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time until lthik and pale-lemon colored. Alternate additions of flour and fruit mixture and the mashed bananas, stirring after each addition until well blended. Begin and end with flour mixture.
4. Spoon into prepared loaf pan and bake in preheated oven for about 60 minutrs or until bread pulls away from the sides of the pan.
5. Let cool about 20 minutes before turning out on a rack to cool well.