Delish! Banana Bread

Mmmmmm!

I’ve been craving banana bread lately.. I’m not really sure why but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with my Hubby constantly telling me he’s sick of seeing the sad looking black & frozen bananas in our freezer everytime he slides the drawer out. So I took to the trusty social media world to find me an A+ recipe to try out.

(The last time I made banana bread it was a little too dry and kind of bland.. I was on the lookout for something that would be as brag worthy as my chocolate chip cookies.)

Of course the wonderful world of web did not disappoint! I found some AMAZINGLY tasty looking recipes!!

Here are some banana bread recipes that I looked at on Punchfork but thought they would be a little over the top for what I was looking to pull off @ 645pm..

(PS If you haven’t discovered Punchfork …do it now!! It’s stellar!)

Drool worthy recipes!:

Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread – Mmmmm!

Reese’s Peanut butter banana bread – Wowzers! 

Banana Stuffed French Toast – Sounds heavenly and makes me feel chubby just looking at it!

Banana Cinnamon Bread – Different..

Skillet Banana Bread – Unique!

TOO MANY CHOICES: Banana Bread with berries, nutella, nuts, low fat, high fat, whole wheat, cupcakes, cake, skillet…

With all these choices and a toddler who wanted to help before his 7pm bedtime I took inspiration from a Weelicious recipe and made a few modifications of my own:

delish! Banana Bread

Makes 1 9x13 loaf

Time: 1hr 25 min with toddler help (1hr 10 min without toddler help)

½ c softened Butter

¾ c white sugar

2 eggs (brought to room temp)

3 sm bananas (mashed up)

1/3 c milk (I used 1% but I’m sure others % would work just as well.)

2 tsp vanilla (I LOVE vanilla and will probably up this to 2.5 or even 3 tsp in the next batch)

1 tsp almond extract (I like this extract but you could omit if you want)

2 c flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 c of mini chocolate chips

Prep:

Take out your eggs, frozen bananas, and butter to let them all come to room temp (about 1-2 hrs)

Frozen Banana side note ** I like my bananas almost green so as soon as they get brown spots I can’t eat them anymore.. so they go in the freezer for baking. When you are ready to use them for baking, after they have somewhat thawed, break off the top, pinch the bottom of banana and they slide right out like a snake.. perfect for mashing!

Preheat oven to 350F

Grease the bread pan or put in parchment paper

Baking:

Mix butter and sugar with a stand mixer until it’s light and well blended. (approx. 3-5min)

Add eggs 1 at a time (mix in 1^st egg well before adding 2^nd egg)

Continue mixing at a low speed

Add in mashed Bananas

Add Milk

Add Vanilla and Almond Extract

Mix all wet ingredients and in a separate bowl start mixing your dry ingredients

Mix together the flour, baking soda & salt

Add in the dry ingredients slowly so you don’t get the flour explosion from the mixer 

Finally add in the chocolate chips YUM!

Mix until JUST blended – don’t beat it to a pulp

Bake for 1hr (I started testing it with a toothpick at about the 50min mark. Once the toothpick comes out clean – she’s ready!)

Your house will smell DELICIOUS right about now!

Let the bread cool for at least 10 min IN THE PAN

Slice and enjoy!

Tips/Notes from me:

1. Don’t get greedy with the cleaning out the freezer of bananas.. My bananas were a lil on the XL side so 3 was a bit too much banana mush
2. I’m not sure why I do it but I always seem to start baking project at bad times… 10 minutes before toddler bedtime is not advised
3. Apparently Banana Mush is very tempting to drop soothers in…I only had to fish it out twice… Toddler germs are all evaporated with the baking right? 

Do you have a Banana Bread recipe you would recommend?

To Do:

*Start freezing more bananas – this recipe rocked!

*Next time I will make a double batch – this was too good not to share with the whole office

*Download Wk 2 of C25K cause after eating ½ the loaf my arse needs to get in motion again