This is about the best banana bread recipe I know. It tastes great, it keeps well, it takes less than 10 minutes to prepare. You can't ask for much more than that.
I enjoy this a lot more baking it in small loaf pans rather than a regular bread pan. It would go stale before I could eat the whole thing. With the small loaves, I bake 2 or 3 a weekend and freeze all but one. Every couple of days I’ll pull a new one out of the freezer and never have any trouble with it going stale.
Yield: 1 full-sized loaf or 2 small loaves
Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
In a bowl, combine:
· 1/2 stick (4-5 tablespoons) butter, softened
· 2 eggs
· 2 or 3 very ripe bananas (they s/b black and nasty looking!?
· 2/3 cup sugar (or Splenda if you need to go LC)
Use a potato masher, fork, or spoon to squish the banana and mix the ingredients together. It is all right for there to be small (1 centimeter) chunks of banana in the batter, but you want most of the banana to be reduced to mush.
In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients:
· 1-1/3 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
· 3/4 teaspoon salt
· 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
· 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
· 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix until the ingredients are blended together.
If you like, stir in additional ingredients here, such as chopped walnuts or pecans, dried cherries or apricots, or chocolate chips. A handful (about a half a cup) is about right.
Pour the dough into greased baking pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Small loaves take around 30 minutes; a normal-sized loaf takes around 50 minutes.
Remove from the oven. This bread is great warm, but it is excellent cold too.
After they have cooled for 5 or 10 minutes the loaves can be removed from the pan to cool. Once they are cool they can be individually wrapped and frozen.
Enjoy!