Banana Bread

This takes minutes to prepare but an hour of enduring the intoxicatingly sweet aroma. I'm sure there is a place in heaven that just smells like freshly baked banana bread. In my opinion, it’s everything banana bread should be, moist, sweet and lightly studded with banana chunks. This lovely loaf can last for days if you can manage to have it last that long

For starters, if you want good banana bread you must use "bad" bananas!

When it comes to mixing and mashing the bananas, I like to have pea sized chunks in my loaf. The great part about this recipe is you can easily customize it to your liking. You can make your banana mixture perfectly smooth, leave it with large chunks, add nuts or reduce the sugar. However you like it, make it your own or make it as directed but most importantly, enjoy it, it's banana bread!

Back in my newly baking days, I was whipping up this bread before I headed into work and was so excited about sharing it that I took the "just eyeball it" approach to adding the walnuts. I thought, "yup, this looks like enough" and off I went. It wasn't until I arrived at work and made the first slice that I began to realize, hum..that's a good amount of walnuts. Slice after slice I handed out, I realized It was so filled with walnuts that it was more like a walnut loaf that had the essence of banana than a banana bread graced with walnuts. It was one nutty loaf. To my surprise, one of my coworkers was a huge fan of walnuts and couldn't get enough of it. I feel like she redeemed my abundantly nutty banana bread and all was not lost.

Banana Bread

⅓ Cup (76g) Butter, melted and cooled to room temperature

3-4 (1 ½ c or 440g) Very Ripe Bananas

1 Egg, beaten

1 Cup (200g) Sugar (can be reduced by ¼ c or 50g)

¼ tsp Salt

1 ½ tsp Vanilla

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 1/2 Cups (187g) All Purpose Flour

Optional Additions:

½ tsp Cinnamon

½ Cup Chopped Walnuts

Preheat your oven to 350°F. (175°C).
Melt the butter and allow it to cool to room temperature before adding it to the batter.
Butter an 8.5 x 4.5 in (21.6 x 11.4 cm) bread loaf pan and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl add all of your banana and give them a quick mash, nothing perfect as they will continue to smooth out during mixing.
Add the melted butter, bananas, egg, sugar, salt, vanilla and the optional cinnamon.Mix and mash the banana mixture until the ingredients are homogeneous and the bananas chunks are at your desired thickness.
Sprinkle the baking soda over the mixture and mix until combined.
Lastly, add the flour and mix until you no longer see traces of flour. If adding walnuts, do so at this time. Mix only with two strokes and add to your bread pan.
Bake for 1 hour or until the center comes out clean when pierced with a wooden skewer.