Ready to Eat Banana Bread

While grocery shopping last week in the late afternoon, I saw an employee at Superstore stocking bananas. As I was about to grab a bunch, I saw three ladies hovering next to him asking for something. He pulls out a white paper bag with handles and I immediately recognized it was for day-old "ready to eat" bananas which meant they would be discounted at 50%. With that, I grabbed a bag of ready to eat bananas and another bag of ready to eat organic bananas, each at 50% off. In total, I spent $2.12 for 8.3 lbs of bananas. That works out to roughly $0.25/lb? Not a bad deal.

Since my little man can eat bananas all day (he uses American Sign Language to sign the word "banana" every time we go grocery shopping, without fail), we managed to make quite a dent in the 8.3 lbs I bought. We still had about 9 bananas left that I wanted to use up as it became a breeding ground for fruit flies.

I decided I wanted to bake banana bread and banana muffins that day since it was overcast. I thought to myself, surely, it beats baking when it is sunny out right? Wrong. It proved to be a horrible idea. Just because it is overcast in early August does not mean it is cooler out. Even with the kitchen window open and fans blowing full blast, I was sweating profusely as my kitchen became a sauna. Luckily, I managed to finish making both recipes before my little man got up from his afternoon nap so I could leave the house.

I tested a new banana bread recipe since I did not have milk on hand for my old standby recipe. The result was a banana bread that was dense but moist, and delicious. Next time, I'll have to remember to let the banana bread cool off so I don't burn my tongue.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, unsalted

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 1/3 cups mashed overripe bananas
1 banana, sliced

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Grease a 9 x 5" loaf pan with butter.

3. Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl: flour, baking soda and salt.

Flour, baking soda and salt.

4. In a stand mixer or another bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until fully blended. Beat in the eggs then the mashed bananas.

Use a stand mixer to cream the butter.

5. Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients. Fold the batter (with a wooden spoon or spatula) until it is just combined, making sure not to over stir as this causes the quick bread to become tough.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients using figure 8 strokes while turning the bowl occasionally.

6. Pour batter into loaf pan. Decorate with sliced bananas.

Ready to bake!

7. Bake for 60 - 65 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Ready to Eat!

8. Cool the banana bread in the loaf pan for 10 minutes. Take the banana bread out of the loaf pan and cool on a wire rack. Or, you can be like me and cut up a slice to eat right away. :)

Source: Allrecipes