Thursday, September 30, 2010

Going Bananas!

We just had a couple bunches of bananas in our home this week. My favorite time to eat bananas is just after they stop being green. After a while, once they start to brown, they are just too sweet for me. I'm not likely to eat them straight from the peel when they are like that, but they are still good for smoothies and cutting up into your Rice Krispies! But there comes a point when they are good for nothing but Banana Bread.

Two bunches of bananas may be too much for my family to have at once. We've eaten them as best we could, but they still went brown and mushy pretty quickly. Brian says it is my fruit bowl. He thinks it has supernatural powers to turn fruit bad before their time. Anyway, we had three soon-to-be rotten bananas, and it was time for Banana Bread.

I guess everyone probably has a recipe for Banana Bread. I'm not going to say that this is the very best Banana Bread recipe there is, because I'm sure someone out there has a better one. But that being said, there really aren't that many variations to Banana Bread recipes. They're all gonna have pretty much the same basic ingredients. But maybe you don't have your own recipe for Banana Bread. Then I would like to share mine with you. This is a good standby, I-don't-have-to-put-much-effort-into-this, only-making-this-to-use-up-old-bananas kind of recipe. Of course, you could add some spices or chocolate chips, (would have done that if I had some on hand) to make it your own.




Banana Bread

Ingredients:
1/2 cup oil
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
3 or 4 ripe bananas, smushed to mush
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional
1/8 cup additional sugar for pan, optional

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine oil and sugar and whisk together. Add the bananas and eggs and whisk to combine. Add the dry ingredients, milk, vanilla and nuts and stir well to fully incorporate. Grease a 5x9 inch loaf pan. Add sugar to the pan and shake around till it coats the bottom and sides of pan. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 1 hour. Allow to cool before removing from pan.

Options for serving:
1. As soon as it is cool enough to eat.
2. Well chilled from spending some time in the fridge
3. Sliced, toasted and slathered in butter.

Enjoy!!

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