Bananas

What do you do when you have some nasty looking bananas around the house?

Make banana bread of course!


bananabread
Originally uploaded by Teckelcar.

On Monday I stuffed two rather spotted and slightly mushy bananas into the refrigerator. Today I thought I would make banana bread. This recipe I scrounged off of the internet in 1994 from rec.food.recipes. It looks like it has moved to another site and you have to subscribe and pay to gain access to the archives.

Poo to that. It was free in 1994 and it was originally contributed to The Chicago Tribune Food Guide, June 20, 1991 (submitted by Jean Banys of Lyons, IL).

So here it is verbatim:

Banana Chocolate Chip Loaf

1 cup sugar
½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)
½ cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup semisweet mini chocolate chips**
½ cup nuts (optional)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9” x 5” x 3” loaf pan.

2. Cream the sugar and butter with an electric mixer until light. Add the eggs and mix well. On low speed, mix in the bananas, milk, and vanilla. Stop the mixer and add the flour, baking soda and salt. Mix until just combined, then stir in the mini chocolate chips and nuts.

3. Transfer batter to prepared pan. Bake until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes. Cool in the pan 5 minutes; turn onto a wire rack to cool completely before slicing.

**Note: Mini chocolate chips work better than regular chips because the regular size ones tend to sink to the bottom of the loaf during baking.

This is a very tasty version. I like to line the loaf pan with parchment/wax paper. It is just plain easier for me that way. When I make the batter I use 1 ½ cups of chips and no nuts (hey, if there is room for ½ cup of nuts, then there is room for a ½ cup of chips instead) and I use regular sized chips. I don’t have the “sinkage” problem as detailed above. I also end up baking the loaf much longer (approximately by 15 min.) than is suggested. I just keep checking it with my cake tester. It really is important to let the loaf cool completely before slicing. If it is still hot it becomes a big (albeit tasty) mess.