At our house, we go through phases where we make smoothies every morning. When bananas start to turn brown, we throw them in the freezer, so we can use them in a smoothie later. We have an entire shelf in the freezer devoted to frozen fruit. There are the bananas we’ve rescued, bags of frozen fruit, and even bags of frozen spinach. There are strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and… peaches.
Of all of the smoothies we make, this one is my favorite.
Peach Smoothie Serves One
Ingredients
1/2 banana
1/2 container peach yogurt
1/2 10 oz bag of frozen peaches
1/2 cup orange juice
Method
Put all of the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Serve immediately.
A few over-ripe bananas recently prompted me to think about making banana bread, but I also had a couple of over-ripe peaches and I thought, “I love my banana-peach-oj smoothie. Why not make a banana-peach-orange tea bread?” and Fuzzy Navel Tea Bread was born. To give it a real orange punch, I included orange zest from an entire (albeit small) orange. This bread works as well during the summer as it would as a Christmas gift. The orange zestiness of it is reminding me of Christmas. You could healthy it up a bit by reducing the sugar and substituting a portion of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour, but I was really going for a sweet, delicate quick bread best enjoyed with afternoon tea (or at breakfast or brunch, of course).
Fuzzy Navel Tea Bread One loaf
Ingredients
8 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature (+ butter for greasing pan)
2 cups All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 very ripe bananas
2 very ripe peaches
zest of one orange
2 Tbsp fresh orange juice
Method
1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Use butter to grease one medium loaf bread pan and set aside.
2. Mix dry ingredients and set aside. Put peaches in a blender and pulse until well mashed. Transfer to a bowl and mash in the bananas using a potato masher or a fork. Add zest of one orange (I used a microplane zester/grater) and mix thoroughly with bananas and peaches. In a medium bowl, cream the butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time and then beat in the fruit mixture and orange juice.
3. Gently stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients. Don’t over mix.
4. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes. Test with a toothpick, which should come clean when inserted.
Tools I used in this recipe can be found at Amazon.com:
