Banana Bread

You know how sometimes you look in your pantry/fridge/counter and you see something that's almost not good anymore but can still be used? Probably not. But I do. And this is my story. So carrying on,  you see that food thing and you think to yourself, "How can I use this before it's too late?" and then it hits you! Right square in the jaw. That banana just comes alive and punches you! What? Did that just happen? Seriously? No, not seriously. The banana did not just come alive and assault you, the idea did! And that idea says "Hey! Go make banana bread!" and you know that it's a very assertive idea so you listen to it and make banana bread. No, y'all probably don't know, but that's okay. I'm a pretty good story teller if I do say so myself!

So there I was, in the kitchen, with three almost-not-good bananas. I thought to myself, "Hmmm. I wonder how many bananas that banana bread recipe calls for." so I went and rummaged through my recipe pile (It's quite a masterpiece, that pile is. It's in one of those huge foil pans that you make brisket with.) and the very last piece of paper (isn't it always?) was the recipe and how many bananas did it call for? Three! Correct! Ding ding ding! You're the winner!

I really like this recipe. It's from Joy of Baking and I've made it before. I think only once, when I did the Great American Bake Sale a few springs ago. I put walnuts in mine, because I like walnuts sometimes and always better than pecans. You don't have to put them in yours, though. I won't take it personally or anything. I toasted them like the recipe said, then cut them. I guess I didn't cut them finely enough, though, since when I ate it I could definitely tell where a walnut was and it was pretty big. So anyway, the recipe is pretty straight forward. I mashed the bananas with a fork, but I guess you could use a potato masher or some crazy contraption. Or you could engineer some fancy thing and then get a patent and become rich and famous for your state-of-the-art, one-of-a-kind, fancy-shmancy banana masher. But I would probably still use a fork. 

One small note, when I made this the first time I thought that it would be a good idea to sprinkle sugar on top, right? Wrong. It kind of crusted on the top and made this weird top thing. It was good and all, but made cutting it a small challenge.

I guess there isn't much more to ramble on about, so without further ado, the pictures!

First, mix up your dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon).

Then, get the mashed bananas, eggs, vanilla, and melted butter and mix those up.

If you are using nuts, toast those sometime. I just did it when the oven was preheating, and they were fine. Let those cool, and chop them finely, unless you want big pieces in your bread. The recipe says to put them in with the dry ingredients but I just mixed them in after the wet ingredients and it didn't explode or anything.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients gently, until everything is mixed together but not over mixed. Then it would be elastic-y and just not good. So don't do that. I added the walnuts after this step, as you can see.

Put it in a buttered and floured loaf pan and bake at 350 for 55-60 minutes.
Pre Bake
Post Bake

Recipes that I used:

Joy of Baking Banana Bread 

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