Banana Bread!

Hello hello! I'm here with my first "official" recipe post, and I'm pretty excited. I hope this will be the first of many original recipes as well as old favorites I've found around the web and tweaked. I'd like to balance it equally between recipes and outfits here, as I really do cook quite a lot.

This is the banana bread recipe I mentioned a bit ago in my 7 things post. The recipe is incredibly versatile...there are so many options for spicing, flavors, topping, ratios, etc. The recipe I started with is here, but you'll see if you compare that I differ quite a bit. Mostly what I'm trying for is a healthier (but still delicious) treat!

You'll have to forgive me too for the quality of some of the pics. There are no windows in the front of our apartment and the only lighting is gosh-awful fluorescents, so I'm fiddling with lighting scheme all the time with different lamps and bulbs to see what works best. This didn't turn out to be ideal!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 bananas
• 3/4 cup sugar*
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/3 cup butter, melted

*Sugar is one of the things in this recipe that is extremely versatile. I have used 1/4 cup white, 1/4 cup brown, and 1/4 cup honey and it was delicious. This time I used 1/4 cup brown, 1/4 cup honey, and 1/4 cup that was half and half brown sugar and honey. We are attempting to cut out white sugar wherever we can here, plus the flavors of banana and honey are divine together!

1. Preheat oven to 375. You can bake muffin-style, loaf style, or in a round cake pan like I did. Make sure to grease whatever pan you choose.

2. Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Flour, baking soda, salt. I usually just eyeball the salt because I like to live dangerously. Set aside.

It's banana time.

3. In a separate bowl, add cut bananas.

You can mash your bananas in a food processor if you like, or you can chop into slices and mash with a spoon. We have a food processor, but in the spirit of fewer dishes I usually opt to mash by hand. I add big banana chunks, then I stab 'em a bit until they look like this:

Then you keep working at them. I alternate between stabbing, chopping, and smushing. Eventually it will look like this:

It's still very lumpy, but don't worry.

4. Add the sugar/honey, egg, and melted butter to the bananas. If you want to add spices, now's a great time. Cinnamon is an awesome standard. Nutmeg is delicious. Vanilla extract? Sure! Whatever crazy combo you can come up with will probably be delicious. Beat with hand mixer until well combined. The mixer will do a great job of finishing the banana mashing process and you should get a great smoothish mix.

5. Add your liquid ingredients to your dry ingredients. Stir them together and get everything incorporated. This is a fairly moist batter and will be slightly lumpy.

6. Pour your batter into your pan.

7. Now you have this beautiful blank canvas in front of you! What will you do with it?

Last time I made this, I warmed up a little Nutella and swirled that on top. You could do any number of things, chocolate chips, fruit/jelly/jam, dried fruit, granola, the list is endless really. I decided this time to please Michael (the man)'s voracious peanut butter sweet tooth and give that a try.

I warmed some peanut butter in a bowl until it was more of a liquid consistency. I also added some cinnamon to the peanut butter for flavor.

Then I did a little swirly drizzle on top. I left a portion blank to try the plain flavor of the bread.

Then I take a spoon and do a fancy swirl so I can imagine myself a pastry chef. :)

This is the very same technique I used for the Nutella version.

8. Almost there! Now just bake this baby for 18-25 minutes. What sugar variant you use with affect the final baking time. With 1/2 cup of actual sugar and only 1/4 cup of honey my baking time was about 4 minutes less. With more liquid, it took about 25 minutes. I usually set it for 18 minutes and just watch over it the last few to get the perfect balance of doneness.

Voila!

Delish. It's so simple and I think it can be a very impressive looking dessert with the fancy swirls. I also don't feel quite as guilty snacking on it, what with the bananas and all! :D If you give the recipe a spin, be sure to let me know what you try and how it turns out!

Enjoy ladies! See you soon!