banana bread treasure chest

My daughter is "studying" pirates in preschool this week. This is very exciting to her. Now I'm assuming that they are talking about Disney Junior Pirates, and not Somalian Pirates... Tomorrow, she gets to dress up as a pirate, and go on a treasure hunt! And I figured I could bring a themed snack for the class.

After last week's sugar fest, I thought I'd make an effort to bring something healthier... not that this is health food, but at least it's not sugar on top of sugar! And if only I had thought to use the nutriblend flour that's sitting in the cupboard instead of unbleached all purpose, I could have added fiber... bah... next time!

I'm pretty sure this is my mom's banana bread recipe, as it's only a list of ingredients in my notebook of go-to recipes. It's probably from an old Betty Crocker cookbook or something like that. I've tried a lot of banana bread recipes in the past, but always come back to this one. Never lets me down. Now usually, I'd add a cup of chocolate chips to this, but left this one plain. (I'm trying to pass this off as an healthy snack, remember?)

Classic Banana Bread

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp oil
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/4 cup mashed ripe bananas

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9 inch loaf pan.

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, combine wet ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix until just blended.

Pour batter into the greased loaf pan, and bake for 65 to 70 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

So what does banana bread have to do with pirates? Well, with some imagination, the shape of the loaf could resemble a treasure chest. There's a lot of nicely done treasure chest cakes on flickr, but I was trying to avoid covering the thing with frosting, or worse, fondant!

So, I tried to embellish it as little as I could while getting it to look like a treasure chest. It's an old one, you see? Lots of wear and tear.

The detailing on the edges is fruit leather. Healthy right? And the treasure? Shiny gold, ruby, emerald and amethyst - fruit salad!