Cream Cheese Banana Bread with Orange Glaze

Cream cheese takes this banana bread to a whole new level. The loaves have an almost pound cake like texture and taste. Instead of being brown-flecked like most banana breads, this one has a lighter color inside.

Gather up your ingredients:

3/4 cup butter
8 oz. cream cheese
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups of mashed banana (about 4 medium bananas – I didn’t measure the mush)
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

Cream the butter and cream cheese together in a mixer bowl. Mix in the sugar, then the eggs, bananas, and vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Add them to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Pour into 3 well-greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 60-75 minutes.

For the glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar
3 Tbs. orange juice
1 tsp. orange peel

Start with less than the 3 Tbs. of orange juice, stirring it into the powdered sugar until you get a nice consistency. As you can see from the pictures, my glaze was a bit thin. I didn’t use the orange peel because I didn’t have any. It would add more flavor to the glaze to use it.

These loaves freeze very well.