Comfort Food equals Banana Bread

For my family when things are out of control crazy things get forgotten; like the fresh bananas in the fruit basket. Sometimes we even like to intentionally let them turn the perfect brown for something sweet and savory and the perfect pick me up. Ok so I have lots of perfect pick me ups, but this one is very easy, quick, and nearly fool proof. If you forget a few ingredients it may or may not turn out nearly as great.

 

Nearly Foolproof Banana Bread

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Butter...if I am in a hurry I will use Margarine straight out of the fridge since its soft cold

1 Cup Sugar

1 Egg

3+ Medium Brown Bananas I have used up to 5 and this still turns out great

2 Cups Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Baking Powder

5 Tbsp Milk

I love that this is made with what I like to call real ingredients, ones that we almost always have in the kitchen. I admit I am most likely to be out of sugar.....I have a sweet tea addiction and can't help it.  These are the perfect stage to make banana bread; I love buying the brown ones from the store when they are deeply discounted and make up some to freeze. Getting bananas at the perfect stage helps with flavor, but if they are a little worse than these they will still work great. If they have turned to liquid mush then it's past time and best to freeze for smoothies later.

Contrary to most people's thoughts I do not pre mix the dry ingredients and jump right in. So throw the butter and sugar in the bowl and get to mixing. After the butter and sugar are well mixed add the egg and mix well. Once the egg is mixed in begin adding the bananas. I wanted to make sure that you saw the inside of the bananas since they look a little worse for the wear in the last photo. These are soft and I cut off any really brown areas. Then I just mix the bananas in until they are broken up, but not completely demolished. Leave some of the chunks for little surprises in the bread. 

Because the best part of comfort food is the ease, at this point just begin throwing in the dry ingredients. I try to separate the baking soda and baking powder but if I am in a hurry I just go with it and it always seems to work out. Once the flour, baking soda, and baking powder are mixed in add the 5 tablespoons of milk and mix until there are no pools of milk. Once everything is mixed together you are ready to put it into the pans. At this point I usually think oh no I forgot to grease the pans and I do love the bread to slide right out. So out comes the greatest invention ever...well at times like this I think this is the greatest invention.....the flour spray, oh how I love you. I use medium sized pans so I spray 2 real quick and divide the batter evenly. I jiggle the pans a little if the batter isn't spreading out evenly but that happens rarely.

 

If you know me really well you know that I hate high electric bills, so I do not pre-heat the oven. Just turn it onto 350 degrees, and put the pans into the oven. My oven takes about 5 minutes to get up to 350 so I just set the timer for 45 minutes and walk away. After 45 minutes you should have some really great smelling bread that is a nice golden brown and slightly cracked on the top. I also don't always check the inside if it looks like it does on the right. After about 5-10 minutes I will remove the bread from the pan. If you don't it will begin to sweat and you will have soggy bread.

 

After trying to resist the urge to pick it up and tear off chunks and eat an entire loaf, I do slice just one just to make sure it's perfect for my family to eat.

 

 

 

 

 

 The kid's do prefer to add butter while it's still hot!


 

For Printable Recipe click here.