B is for Banana Bread

If you're anything like me, you would never even think of eating an over-ripe banana; actually, if you are anything like me you would probably try to keep a five-meter distance from any type of banana... But that's besides the point. The fact of the matter is, there is a very wonderful future that awaits your icky mushy too-ripe bananas: turn them into banana bread! We never tend to have enough bananas in this state to make it right then and there but an easy solution is to freeze them. This may sound absurd but really: just freeze them. Once your collection has reached more or less 4 bananas just pull 'em on out of the freezer, defrost them and make some baked goodness.

As you (may or may not be able to) see, our banana bread recipe has been useda ridiculous amount of times, and i guess you could say it has seen better days... Anyways, here it goes:
-1/2 C butter (about 115 grams)
-3/4 C brown sugar
-2 eggs
-1 t vanilla (but more is good too)
-2 C flour
-1/2 t salt
-1/2 t baking soda
-1 1/2 C mashed banana (usually about 4 bananas)

You probably want to start off by mashing the bananas together with a fork into a small bowl, leave them in the bowl though, you wont need them until later. It's also a good idea to measure out the butter ahead of time so that it softens and is easier to work with. When the bananas are mashed they don't need to be perfect as they will be blended later, just get them looking kind of like this:

Preheat the oven at 175 degrees Celsius. Next, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time and then the vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix up the dry ingredients (flour, salt and baking soda). Alternate between mixing in some of the flour mixture and the mashed banana until both are added. The batter should look like this:

Put the batter into a greased baking pan (the deep rectangle kind) and bake for 45-60 minutes. In my oven it took around an hour but i started checking at 45 minutes. Oh, and if you don't know how to check if it's completely baked: stick a knife into the middle of the bread and go all the way down; when you pull it out the knife should be dry, this means the bread is completely baked. When you take it out of the oven, put it on a cooling rack of sorts if you have one handy, if not, just let it cool in the pan or on a plate. It's quite tasty when it's still warm with a glass of milk or beer (whatever floats your boat).

This is pretty much my grandma's original recipe but there are gobs of things you can do to modify it. This time for instance i added a bit of cinnamon but you can add all sorts of nuts, spices, chocolate chips, raisins or other dried fruits... pretty much anything as long as the thought of it alone doesnt make you gag. Some people also enjoy eating the banana bread with some cream cheese, maybe even butter if you're extra-crazy/French. I prefer it by itself but hey, it's up to you.

Cheers!

P.S.

Bowie also quite likes banana bread batter...