Sour Cream Banana Nut Bread

Fall homecoming at New Hope AME. My third homecoming since Marcus died—the first one I couldn't attend, the second one I attended but stood at the door, the third one I cooked and served and stood at the serving station for four hours without once losing my footing. This is what progress looks like: not the absence of grief but the development of the ability to carry it while your hands are full of other things.

We served approximately two hundred and fifty people at the homecoming repast. Two hundred and fifty. I have a team of fourteen women now for major events—the homecoming kitchen requires everyone—and we cooked for three days and served for four hours and the fellowship hall smelled the way it has always smelled at homecoming: like fried chicken and sweet potato pie and the specific joy of people who came from somewhere and came back and are being fed by the same hands that have been feeding them since before some of them were born.

One of the alumna who came back—a woman named Patricia, who grew up in this church in the nineties and moved to Atlanta and comes back every year for homecoming—sought me out after the meal specifically to tell me she had been reading the blog and that my post about Marcus and the dream had changed something in her. She said she had lost her mother two years ago and she had stopped making her mother's recipes because the making was too painful, and that reading about how I returned to the kitchen through a dream gave her permission to return to her mother's kitchen. She said she made her mother's pound cake last month for the first time since the funeral. She said she cried the whole time she made it. She said it was the most present she'd felt with her mother since the casket.

I held this woman's hands at the homecoming and I thought about the chain—about Bernice and me and Destiny and now this woman in Atlanta and her mother and the pound cake—and I thought: this is why. This is exactly why the writing and the cooking and the standing in the fellowship hall and the getting up every Tuesday and every Saturday and every Sunday, this is why. Because there is always a Patricia. There is always someone whose mother's kitchen is still there, waiting for them to come back.

When Patricia told me she had made her mother’s pound cake for the first time since the funeral—crying the whole time, feeling more present with her mother than she had since the casket—I knew exactly what she meant, because that is the thing about a loaf baked from memory: it holds the person who taught you. I do not have Patricia’s mother’s pound cake to give you, but I can offer you this Sour Cream Banana Nut Bread, which carries that same spirit—humble ingredients, a generous crumb, the kind of loaf that a grandmother makes on a Tuesday morning without measuring anything twice. Bake it for someone who needs feeding, or bake it alone and cry if you need to. Either way, you will feel something, and that is the whole point.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 60 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes | Servings: 10 slices

Ingredients

3 very ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/4 cups)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans, toasted

Instructions

Preheat and prepare. Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan with butter and dust lightly with flour, or line with parchment paper leaving an overhang on the long sides for easy lifting.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add wet ingredients. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then mix in the vanilla extract, mashed bananas, and sour cream. The mixture may look slightly curdled—that is normal and will smooth out once the flour goes in.
Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon until evenly combined.
Fold together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula just until no dry streaks remain—do not overmix. Gently fold in the toasted nuts.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake for 55 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs. If the top browns too quickly, tent loosely with foil after 40 minutes.
Cool before slicing. Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing. It slices cleaner and tastes better once it has had time to settle.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sour Cream Banana Nut Bread — For Every Patricia Whose Mother’s Kitchen Is Still Waiting