Banana Bread

Whenever I have overly-ripe bananas on hand, I love to make banana bread.  Sometimes I will buy new bananas and save the older ones simply so that I can make a couple of loaves of one of my family's favorites.  You can keep it as plain as you like, or dress it up with the addition of chocolate chips or nuts.

The recipe posted is for a single loaf; as usual, I double the recipe for the size of my family.

1-2 ripe bananas
3/4 c. sugar
1/3 c. veg. oil or coconut oil
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

Oven temperature: 350 degrees.  Baking time: 55 minutes.

Grab those ripe bananas and remove the peels, of course!

Place the bananas into a small bowl.

Using your favorite mashing method, go ahead and mash the bananas down.  We use the "Egg Masher" in our house.

This is an easy step for kids to help with.  Both J & K helped with this part of the recipe while I measured out the other ingredients.

After a thorough mashing (and repeated requests to please stop mashing!), the bananas will look something like this.  If you aren't as detailed at getting every single piece mashed like my kids were, that's just fine!

Measure out the sugar and oil and place it into another small bowl.

Add the eggs and stir.

At this point, you'll have 3 bowls in use.  One for the bananas, one for the egg/oil mixture, and the largest one containing all the dry ingredients.

Add the mashed bananas to the egg/oil mixture and stir well.

Finally, pour the egg/banana mixture in with the dry ingredients, mixing it well so that no dry areas remain.

Spray a loaf pan with non-stick spray and pour the batter in.  Then place it in your preheated 350 degree oven.

Bake for 50-60 minutes.  The bread will be golden brown, but make sure that it is cooked all the way through in spite of how it appears.  You can test it by inserting a sharp knife or a toothpick into the middle to see if it comes out clean.  Once the bread is done, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool for a few minutes on a cooling rack.

After about 5 minutes, remove the bread from the pan and allow it to cool a bit more...if you can stand to wait that long!  (We normally can't!)

After the bread has sufficiently cooled, slice it up...

add butter...

and enjoy!