If you’re anything like me, you just read that, & thought, Wait! Whaaat? Peanut butter bread? That was me last night, utterly intrigued. Upon further investigation, I learned it’s a depression era bread. Makes sense. I also discovered quite a few recipes for peanut butter banana bread & using a blender to mix it in instead of a traditional mixer; of which I found no interest in either of those things. Fast forward to this morning & I was on it.

The sight, texture, & taste of the dough, & the smell of the bread while baking had all of those senses convinced I was making peanut butter cookies at 8am! Rest assured the end result does not lend itself to the equivalent of cookies. The bread is very peanut buttery, dense, & not very sweet.

Ironically, while I did not opt for the recipe of peanut butter banana bread, I did, in fact, make an open faced peanut butter bread with a smear of peanut butter topped with banana & drizzled with honey sandwich. What can I say? For years, when I regularly ate breakfast, my go to was a banana with peanut butter & when my girls were young, I’d serve them “banana boats” (bananas cut lengthwise with peanut butter spread on them, which my 17 year old still requests I make for her).

More often than not, these days breakfast consists of black coffee, but today was not one of those days. After the bread cooled, & while on a conference call (God bless 3 hour conference calls from the comfort of my kitchen) I ate the above around 9:30am & it was so hearty & filling, I didn’t eat again until dinner.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1 tsp Kosher salt
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a loaf pan with nonstick spray; set aside.

Blend/ beat together the milk, eggs, peanut butter, sugars, & vanilla extract until smooth. Whisk together the salt, baking powder, & flour, add to the wet mixture & blend until just combined. Transfer dough to prepared bread pan. 

Bake for 50 minutes. Remove from oven & allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the pan to finish cooling on a baking rack.

Notes to self:

*stick with your baking intuition & reduce the oven temp to 325 or 335 degrees & check for doneness at 40-45 minutes.

*can you say, peanut butter French toast for brunch?

*mini chocolate chips in the dough, please

*Turbinado sugar & chopped peanuts added to the top & swirled in prior to baking for a sweet, crunchy topping & swirl

*toasted with jelly

*forgo the sugars & use honey instead

*peanut butter bread with peanut butter & sliced apple sandwich

The possibilities are endless!