I love making quick breads to give away. They make the perfect little gift and are always appreciated, especially at Christmas time. A few years back, I decided to try tossing some dried cranberries into our super moist banana bread recipe and this was born. My mother instantly fell in love and it has been a regular holiday recipe ever since.
The combination is sublime and perfect for the holidays! Those little party treat bags I always talk about are the perfect size for packaging this and I used the inexpensive bows I told you about in my Homemade Caramel Corn recipe for a quick and easy packaging option!
I really like mini loaves of bread and seldom make full sized ones. In this recipe, you can make two full sized loaves or eight minis! That means eight lucky folks can get this delicious bread from you as a special holiday treat!
You’ll need: Sugar, Milk, Self Rising Flour, Vanilla, Eggs, Margarine, Dried Cranberries, and Bananas. You can add nuts if you’d like, pecans or walnuts that have been chopped.
I tend to leave nuts out of most recipes due to the added expense.
If your bananas are a bit brown, that’s a good thing! They are sweeter and make much better banana bread. Another thing you can do if your bananas are getting brown is to go ahead and mash them up with a fork (after you peel them!) and place them in a zipper bag and put in the freezer. Make a note on the bag with a permanent marker as to how many bananas are in there and next time you want to make banana bread simply put the bag on your counter and let it thaw then toss them right in there! Works out perfect!
Y’all don’t worry about getting a specific brand of dried cranberry. A dried cranberry doesn’t know what the package it’s in says anyway.
Some of you may not have caught on to the fact that I have real issues with quantity. If one is good, one hundred is better! I cannot pass up a good deal and I do have a tendency to “accumulate” things which I feel are helpful or handy. Thus, this photograph. This shows some of my loaf pans. I got to looking and realized, I acutally have over forty loaf pans! Ten full sized and thirty small sized. some of these pictured still have labels attached..and that one on the bottom right is actually a stack of five, still stuck together exactly how they were packaged. Wanna know whats sad? I have more, I just didn’t want to dig them out!
What do I do with all of these loaf pans? Well I certainly don’t need them all and the amount did sneak up on me. You’ll be happy to know that I have started giving some away now!
I do come by this honest, though, and anyone who knows our family will tell you it is entirely my father’s fault! He is the ultimate “deal man”. He simply cannot pass up a good deal. Once, he found a deal on Christmas paper towels after the holiday season and we literally had an entire truckload of them stored in our garage. Nothing like blotting your mouth with Santa Claus in July! There was also that time he found tuna fish on sale and Mama had to clean out an entire closet for him to fill with canned tuna! I guess it would have helped if any of us actually liked tuna…
He also has his own issues with lightbulbs – one of the things they often did without growing up. In his house, you would literally carry the bulb from room to room with you. So now, anytime you go to my parent’s house, there will be at least a case or two of lightbulbs in the garage.
I could go on and on…but I guess you really wanted Cranberry Banana bread so I’ll hop down off this tangent and get back to cookin’…
Grease and flour your loaf pans. You can see I wasn’t real meticulous with this!
Now what I like to do for my banana bread is put my bananas in the mixer first and beat them until liquefied. This really makes a huge difference in the flavor, with banana flavor infused in every single morsel!
I just mix that for a minute or two until they look like this.
Now add your sugar and mix that up a bit.
Add your margarine.
Add eggs and milk
and vanilla..Not the best photograph but you get my point 🙂
Now add all of your flour in.
I pour my cranberries out onto a large plate and chop them up a bit but you don’t have to.
I just like having more pieces to disperse in my bread. To keep these from sinking in your bread, I suggest sprinkling a tablespoon or so of flour over them and tossing lightly with your hands. I didn’t do that for this bread and it turned out fine, but I normally do.
Add those in to your batter and stir.
Pour into loaf pans. This recipe makes two large loaves or eight small.
Fill them about halfway full and bake at 350 for30 minutes for small loaves, one hour for full sized loaves.
Yum! This was so funny, I was making this bread and my Brady was being positively tortured having to smell it because he wanted some so bad. I told him as soon as it was done he could have some. The bread got done and I turned out all of my loaves onto a towel I had on the counter. A few minutes later, here comes Brady holding an entire loaf and just a munching away! He ate the whole loaf, though! At least he likes his Mama’s cooking.
This is my quick and economical packaging idea. These are the treat bags you find in the party section (twenty for $1.38 last I checked) and the bows are found in the Christmas Decorating Department. I believe they were twenty for $3.00. There, for that little effort, you can have eight lovely gifts!
- 2 C sugar
- 1 C milk
- 1 package dried cranberries (I think mine was 6 oz)
- 1 C chopped nuts (optional)
- 3 C self rising flour
- 1 stick butter or margarine
- 2 eggs
- 3 bananas
- 1 tsp vanilla
- Place peeled bananas in mixing bowl, add sugar. Mix until bananas are liquefied.
- Add margarine, mix until creamed together with banana mixture.
- Add all other ingredients and blend well. Pour into two greased and floured loaf pans and bake for one hour at 350.
- If using mini loaf pans, this will make eight and they will need to cook for about half an hour.
Yum 
These look so good. I like new muffins ideas. I always try to fix muffins on sunday morning.
Christy these look DIVINE! I love banana bread but I had never thought of putting cranberries in them! As for the loaf pans, I am in desperate need of some and just never get around to buying any small ones! I am only a little south of you in Bama, you should send me a couple!
Hey Tracy!! I love muffins myself. My current faves are the raisin bran ones I have on this site. I love that I can make one or two and not be wasteful – but I still get a decent breakfast that I like when the kids want their umm..junk. ~grins~
Honestly, I don’t know how they can call a pop tart breakfast! lol
Thanks for commenting!
Christy
Christy,
I truly believe in the scripture “Ask and you shall recieve” because I have been flippin thru all my baking books today looking for a recipe that I can use some overriped bananas and cranberries in! You are my soul chef!!! Can’t wait to make this tonight! Thanks so much for the great website!!
Holly in California!
That’s a heckuva lot of loaf pans! Where do you store them all?? I only have two, one glass and one metal. The metal one is a bit rusty so I don’t like to use it!
The recipe sounds good. I’ve been wanting to try cranberry orange bread. I never thought of cranberry banana!
Hey Rachel! Send me your mailing address to christy@southernplate.com and I’ll part with a few of them! It is hard for me to let them go but I’ll PRY my fingers off! lol
Holly: WOW this was the COOLEST comment! I am so thrilled with myself! ~giggles~ Go figure! How awesome!!!!!
Sonya- LOL I have a hall closet that was originally intended as a coat closet. I lined that puppy from top to bottom with shelves for baking dishes and pots. I also store some of my bakeware and small appliances on a shelf in the laundry room. I have a staggering number of serving dishes and various catering ware (don’t even ask me how many punch bowls or cake stands I have)which I keep in their original boxes in the garage until I need them. You’d die if you saw how incredibly small my kitchen was! Just about all that can fit in there are my everyday dishes! I had to make a makeshift pantry with shelving units in my laundry room.
Honestly, the people who built this house HAD to live entirely on takeout! I don’t think two people could turn around at the same time in my teensey tiny kitchen.
What a yummy looking bread! Perfect for the holidays. I just made your grandma’s tea cakes this morning, they are so yummy! My mixer is still packed, so I had to cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon – it made me feel a little more nostalgic, to be making an old-fashioned recipe the old-fashioned way!
Stephanie, I think you have the luckiest kids alive, seriously. Will you adopt me?
~batts lashes and tries to look her absolute cutest~
Looks delicious! I never thought to combine cranberry and banana!
I have all purpose flour. Cant I add something to it to be able to use that in this recipe?
Sure thing!
*To make your own self rising flour, simply add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt for EACH cup of all purpose flour.
Hope this helps!
Christy
Christy, I love your recipes and I have both of your books. I have a question–why do you use “self-rising” flour in some of your recipes? I have a small kitchen also and don’t like storing two different flours. I’m sure there must be a good reason, just have not been able to figure it out myself.
mmmmmm banana bread… mmmmm cranberries! This HAS to be good!
Made this last night and it is delicious! The red cranberries make it perfect for holidays. Thanks once again for a great recipe!
Thanks for sharing such great photos,this will be great for my upcomming party.
I also like the idea of chopping the cranberries, but I found if I flour them first they don’t seem to stick to the knife as much and your going to flour them anyway before you toss them into the batter so it’s not any extra steps.
Thank you for the great receipe’s!
I just put this in the oven and my house smells sooo good!! I can’t wait to try it. I added a zucchini and hope it turns out OK (trying to hide green veggies from my 2 year old and he loves banana bread!) Thanks for the recipe!
turned out great!!! i WILL be making this again! YUMMM
OH MY GOSH!
This is simply the best Banana Bread I have ever had in my life!
I used fresh cranberries – it made it super yummy! The “pop” of the tart berries really added to the flavor! I also used half and half instead of milk…I think it was a bit richer 🙂
I made it for Thanksgiving morning – it was a HIT…and am making it for gifts for Christmas.
Can you help me?
I use actual bananas at Thanksgiving. Now, I have bananas that I have already peeled and put into a ziploc and frozen.
Any idea how many cups 3 bananas is?
Thanks so much for a fabulous recipe!
Hey Brenda! Three medium bananas usually give you 2 cups mashed. Hope this helps you!
Hey Christie,
I cruised through the older posts yesterday looking for a way to get rid of the 9 bananas that were sitting on my counter for the past week. I found this recipe and made it right away. I had to write to let you know that this is probably the best banana bread I have ever eaten. In fact, it was so good my family was calling it banana cake. I made one mistake with the recipe, I only made one batch. So after my banana mash defrosts today and I head to the store to buy more cranberries, I will be making more. Thanks so much for this recipe.
I happened upon your website via a friend the other day and my mouth was instantly watering. As I was preparing to bake some quick breads for our local farmers market this weekend, I thought I’d see if you had something different to try. I made this amazingly delicious bread and it will forever be in my file! YUM!!! I did add chopped walnuts to it as well and every bite was filled with a crunch or the sweet/tart taste of the cranberry….my hubby deemed it “the BEST!” 😉
Blessings!
Love the idea of cranberries in banana bread! All-Bran cereal was giving a pkg. of craisins in each box and I was wondering what I was gonna use them in. Now I know! Just need to get me one of those cute mini loaf pans like you showed and I’m good to go! BTW…LOVE all your ‘tangents’ and stories! Tell ’em to us whenever you want. I’m not one to skip them and head straight to the recipe. I’d miss half the FUN!!
This looks so good, I was looking for a nice quick bread recipe to make and bring in to school before the holiday next week – guess I’ve found it. I put dried cranberries in everything, they are my new “addiction”!
Hey Christy!
I plan on making some of these to give as gifts along with some crock pot apple butter and I was wondering how long will they keep? Thank you for everything you do 🙂
I’m new to your site! This looks so yummy! Where did you get the loaf pan with the 4 mini sized pans in it? I love your giving the bread as gifts 🙂
Welcome to Southern Plate Jenna!! I am not sure where I got that at, let me think about it and I will see if I can remember and get back to you.
Making this right now, with blueberries instead of dried cranberries. I don’t have any mini-loaf pans, but I have a “jumbo” muffin pan. These look so delicious and I am impressed with the great reviews from the above posts.
I hope you enjoy them Lisa!!
i made this recipe this morning to get a jump on my Christmas gift baking and the smells are driving me nuts! I hope it tastes as good as it smells.
I am definitely trying this today!!! Christy, where did you buy your loaf pans, I have never seen any like this? Also, I put a bug in Santa’s ear for your cookbook for Christmas. I just love your recipes. Whenever I try anything new now, my family knows it comes from you. Have a great day!!!
Thanks for the recipe 🙂 I especially like that you gave times for the mini loaves, I’m going to try those for my neighbors…. I bought the disposable mini pans, but I’m hoping that I can reuse them… anyone know?
I think you could re-use them so long as they wash ok. I have some of the larger ones that I have re-used a couple of times. Once they get a little ragged looking or get a whole in them I replace them but they work great up until that point.
This is SO happening this weekend!
I hope you enjoy it Sue!!!
I am not the best cook in town – I always screw something up. This time I totally forgot the milk and I ended up with the most scrumptious Banana Cranberry Bread Pudding – it is awesome!
Thanks Christy!