Banana Bread

Banana Bread

Bananas are great, but once they turn mushy... not so much. You could force yourself to finish them... or, you could make banana bread! (You can, of course, make banana bread with fresh bananas, but it's actually considerably easier with old, mushy ones.)

Ingredients

  • 525g ripe/overripe bananas (2 1/3 cups)
  • 115g butter (1/2 cup)
  • 110g brown sugar (3/4 cup)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla (optional)
  • 60g walnuts or pecans
  • 250g all-purpose flour (2 cups)
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda (~5g)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt (~2g)

Directions

  1. Thoroughly mash bananas into a paste in a bowl.
  2. Soften (but do not melt) butter in the microwave, then cream together with the sugar in a large bowl.
  3. Next, beat in eggs one at a time, then optional vanilla. Once mixture has returned to a creamy consistency, beat in banana mixture in 3 batches.
  4. Preheat oven to 160°C (325°F). Grease and flour a 9x5" loaf pan (or dust with cinnamon & sugar if you prefer). (If you have parchment paper, cut a square to fit the bottom of the pan.)
  5. Whisk together dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt) in a medium bowl.
  6. Chop nuts to your preferred size. Reserve 1/3 (the larger bits) to sprinkle on top later, mix the other 2/3 into the dry mix.
  7. When oven is heated, fold dry ingredients into wet mixture. Stir just until there are no more flour streaks. Pour batter into prepared pan and sprinkle reserved chopped nuts on top.

    Bake until a toothpick in the center comes out clean (~60 minutes, 95-100°C at center). Let loaf cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.


Notes & Tips

It is quite possible to save up bananas one or two at a time. Just peel them, drop them in a bag and stash them in the freezer. When you have enough to make a loaf of banana bread, just defrost them on the counter for a couple hours, then mash away. They will turn brown (very brown), but there's nothing wrong with that. They still taste fine when baked.

Temperature is important (although not critical, in this case). Eggs should be close to room temperature (not straight out of the fridge).

As with other similar baked goods, overmixing can develop the gluten in the flour, leading to more chewiness than you might prefer. Light flour streaks and small lumps are okay, giant pockets of dry flour are not.

Loosely based on this recipe: Banana Banana Bread

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