Banana Bread

Bananas are good.

Bread is good.

We can therefore assume with a fair degree of certainty that banana bread is as good as bananas + bread.  Twice the goodness, in other words.

And you know what? For once, I've found an equation that I can actually understand.  I was never much at math.

Let's get this party started!

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

The recipe calls for 5 ripe bananas.  Well the bananas in the middle there certainly fit the bill! But they were pretty small so I took another two regular-sized bananas and added them as well.

Mushy bananas aren't so pretty.  But they're in a pretty bowl so that's okay.  Here's a poll: Do you like chunks of banana in your banana bread? I'm not talking slices here, just little pieces.  I wasn't exactly overly-concerned about getting it uniformly smooth.

Eggs.  4 of them.  OH! And this is weird:

I was all like "oooh, yay, a double yolk!".  This was only the second time I had gotten a double yolk in my life, the first time being a few days earlier.  Strange, right? But then...

I got another one.  What are the odds, do you think? Not just two in one carton, but two in one recipe? I'm probably just making too big a deal out of this.  Rob said it's these New Jersey chickens.  I guess it must be.  Pennsylvania chickens don't do things like this all the time.  At least not to me.

Moving on.

4 eggs, beaten and then mixed with the bananas.  Set the bowl aside.

And here comes the butter.  Two sticks of it, in fact, or one cup.  Nice and soft.

And whip it!

Whip it good!

Come on.  You know you were singing it, too.

Once the butter is whipped up nicely, add 2 1/2 cups of sugar but not all at once, just a half to a full cup at a time.  Combine thoroughly after each addition.

Add in a tablespoon of vanilla extract.

Add in your banana/egg mixture and combine thoroughly.

In a separate bowl, mix together 3 1/2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking soda and a teaspoon of salt.

And add it in stages just like you did with the sugar.  Believe me, you don't want to just dump this on top all at once and try to turn on your mixer.  Unless you like being covered in flour.

I'm not saying I did that this time.  But I may have done it in the past.  Stand mixers make me over-confident, what can I say?

And then for all intents and purposes, you're done.

If you like bland banana bread!

I for one do not.  So I added 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg.

Then I added in more cinnamon.  Because I'm crazy like that.  Crazy and unpredictable.

Grease two 9x5 loaf pans and divide your batter between them.

Don't, by any means, lick batter off your fingers, the spoon or the bowl.  That would be wrong.

Then pop those babies in the oven and go find something else to do for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

When your entire house smells like banana heaven and you're just about ready to die of banana bread lust and you want banana bread so bad you think you're going to explode...!

This happens:

Glorious.

It was so ridiculously moist and flavorful, I just about wanted to slap myself for having the audacity to make it.  But my hands were full of banana bread and that would have just been messy.  So I continued eating.

And then I felt pressed to give a loaf to the neighbors.  Because they've been so good to us and it was the least I could do.  But my heart was heavy, I'm not gonna lie.  It's tough for me to part with food.  Still, they loved it!

Oh...and in case you were wondering: Yes.  This bread WOULD be even better if a handful or two of chocolate chips was mixed into the batter.

But you didn't hear that from me.

Enjoy!!


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