Strawberry Banana Bread

How is your March break going? I think Esme would say that her favourite part of her week off so far was spending a day with me at our lovely Maya’s studio. Since she’s been at “big school” we haven’t had as much opportunity for her to join me on set and she really likes it. I had a good time having her with me, too, and you’ll see some of those stories in the next few weeks. She’s developed some very strong opinions about food styling involving American Girl dolls. But you know what I’ve loved this week? Not packing a lunch. I did a little happy dance on Sunday night when I remembered that I didn’t have to get in the kitchen and batch cook lunch items for the week.

Hopefully your own break from the lunch-packing grind has given you the mental space it can sometimes require to take on some baking projects with your kids. As much as we believe in cooking all kinds of things with kids, there’s no denying that the end result with baking is just more motivating. Here’s one I hope your family will like baking and snacking on for the rest of  the week. When I was scrolling though our archives (man we’ve cooked a lot over the past three years!) I was surprised to discover that we’ve never done a banana bread. I love a classic banana loaf but you probably already have a recipe you like for that, right? I felt like something a bit different so I’ve added some diced fresh strawberries. Plus, I wanted to keep the fat content low without compromising moistness by using yogurt rather than a lot of oil. I straight-up jacked the food styling of the sliced strawberries on top from the wonderful Joy the Baker. Pretty, right? The trick to making a great banana bread of any variation is using really, really ripe bananas. Like, those nearly black ones you’re about to toss? Perfect. Just-ripe fruit will not give you a great flavour. Happy baking!

photo by Maya Visnyei