♥ Banana Bread ♥

    Oh, banana bread.

    The way we Americans can take the healthiest foods we have and turn them into such fattening, unhealthy desserts..It's a little funny, isn't it?

    Now, keep in mind how I'm not insulting us, because like any other American, there's nothing I love more than sweet, soft, moist banana bread (okay, there's a lot of things I love more, but still.) As a kid, I always remember sitting in the kitchen, watching my mom bake up all sorts of pastries: cookies, cakes, cream puffs, muffins, breads, and so much more. One of my favorites was always her banana bread, which sometimes she'd bake into muffins for me and my siblings. I never really counted it as dessert, but more as a snack. It's not hard to understand why I thought that way: after all, it's made with fruit and there's no chocolate in it, so to a small child, how could it possibly be a dessert?

    Well...maybe mine now would seem like dessert, being that if I have some on hand, I'll throw a handful of chocolate chips into the batter (to the dismay of my mother, who can't get enough of the chocolate-banana combination, even as she angrily rants that her hips can get well enough every time she eats it). This recipe originally came as a banana-nut muffin recipe from Allrecipes, and it worked great the first time I made it; my best friend, of whom apparently "loves everything I make", had 3 the day I brought them to school. Out of all the compliments I got on them, that probably tops them all.

    About a month after baking them into muffins, I made the recipe at home into loaves of bread. I was bored at home on night, and while I was rummaging through the pantry for Wheat Thins, I found a few bananas, too brown to eat, laying in the back, untouched. I remembered the muffins and decided to make some, but after making the batter, I realized I had no papers for my muffin pan. Being too tired to care at that point, I found a loaf pan and baked it anyways, and I'm glad I did: ever since, the recipe has been my go to banana bread recipe.

    This recipe, which is extremely simple, comes out perfect every time. There was once a time where I thought there was no way to mess up banana bread: it's so simple, and the bananas keep it perfectly moist; how could one possibly mess it up? Well, a few months back during my cooking class at school, our final project was a cooking demonstration in front of our class. One the girls in my class, part of the group of "popular" kids, demonstrated banana bread, and after watching her demo, I felt a little better about myself. The girl was a bitch to me all throughout my childhood, teasing me and making me feel, well, not as good as a I should of about myself (damaged self-confidence to this day? Unfortunately, yes.) But as we got older, the joke was on her: While I was still a nerd (but now proud of it) and she got more popular, I actually got smarter, while somehow, I think she may have stayed at the same intelligence level she had in 5th grade, only now knowing how to dress, act, and be the "strumpet" of our grade . I was right of course, because when I bit into the samples she gave to the class, it was a bittersweet moment: the dry, tasteless chunk of "banana" bread in my mouth was a sign that even if she was more "popular" than me, it really did prove her stupidity; only an idiot can truly mess up banana bread.

[Don't mind my immature ranting. I am, after all, a 16 year old girl. We're petty that way.]

    Anyway, back to the bread...

The recipe can make about 18 muffins, or about 2 small (2 by 5 loaf pan) loaves of "bread". It also doesn't call for chocolate chips, but like I said, my family prefers it that way, so I'll usually make two different loaves and only add some to one.

Also: the recipe calls for bananas, but what I've realized lately is that the more ripened the banana, the better the product. For those who don't know, the more ripened the banana (i.e. the browner, more "spoiled" it is), the sweeter the banana. I usually like to wait for bananas to get extremely ripe, but usually ahead of time, I'll place a few in a brown paper bag and store it in the pantry to speed up the process. If you're in a crunch for time, there's an even faster method for browning them:
    Preheat your oven to 400°. Place the bananas on a baking sheet (peel on) and bake them for 10-15 minutes, until they're mushy and soft, and the peel is completely dark brown, almost black. To "peel" the bananas, simply take a sharp knife and make a slit through the banana; it should cut easily, and by then, you can just squeeze the banana "mush" right through.

Oh, yum...Don't those 'naners just look so scrumptious? (Warning: once the bananas bake in the oven, they produce a very strong banana..."odor". I found it a little nauseating, and was unsure if I should use them at that point, but they worked perfectly. Also, when the bananas bake, they'll start to (...leak?). That's completely normal as well.)

Happy Baking! ♥

Banana Bread  

Ingredients:

♥ 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
♥1 teaspoon baking soda
♥ 1 teaspoon baking powder
♥ 1/2 teaspoon salt
♥ 3 bananas, mashed
♥ 3/4 cup white sugar
♥ 1 egg, lightly beaten
♥ 1/3 cup vegetable oil
♥ Chocolate chips (optional)


1.) Preheat oven to 375°. Spray pans with non-stick spray, or line muffin tin with papers.
2.) In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. (this can just be done by simply whisking all the ingredients together.)

 3.) In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and oil. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. (If you are adding chocolate chips to the batter, stir them in at the last step. I only added them to half the batter, and I used around 1/3 to 1/2 cup. For the whole batter, I'd say add an entire cup.) Spoon batter into pans.

4.) Bake in preheated oven. For the loaf pans I used above, it took about 30-40 minutes for each to bake together in the oven; for the muffins, it only takes about 15-20 minutes. 

5.) If using cupcake pans, remove muffins immediately and let cool on cooling rack. If using loaf pans, let pans sit until warm/almost cool. Flip loaves onto a flat plate, and slice each piece to your desired thickness. (I cut each slice to about an inch thick.)

Then...enjoy! 

As you can see..I'm pretty sure my family did.

♥