Banana-Fig Bread

For this month's What's Baking challenge we were charged with baking with summer fruits.  July kind of got away from me, and as I've been running around enjoying my summer I didn't realize that I was nearing our deadline.  A few weeks ago I was on a business trip and picked up People magazine (my usual guilty pleasure for travel).  On the last page they had a recipe from Ted Allen for banana-fig bread.  I ripped it out, figuring it was something to add to my pile of recipes I'd get around to making one day, although my husband saw it and started asking me almost daily when I was going to make it.  Then as I started doing research earlier this week into what fruits are in season I noticed that figs were on the list.  Much to my husband's delight, I realized that this recipe fit the bill perfectly!

This ended up being a way to spend today's rainy afternoon.  It takes almost an hour of baking time, so it's great for a day when you have to hang around the house anyway.  And, ironically, we ate it while watching tonight's Chopped.

I'm excited for next month's What's Baking when I get to play host!!

Ted Allen's Banana-Fig Bread (originally published in People magazine, July 23, 2012)

Ingredients

1 cup chopped walnuts
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup whole-what pastry flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 large ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups dried figs, stemmed and diced
6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla


Directions

- Preheat the oven to 350

- Bake walnuts 5 to 10 minutes or until golden, stirring after 4 minutes; set aside

- Whisk flours and next 4 ingredients in a large bowl; set aside.  Combine bananas and next 5 ingredients in a medium bowl; stir in walnuts.

- Fold banana mixture into flour mixture.  Spoon batter into a buttered and floured 9x5 in loaf pan.  Bake 55 minutes or until a wooden pick comes out clean, shielding with foil if necessary.  Cool bread in pan on a wire rack 30 minutes.  Remove from pan, cool completely.