Banana Bread

My husband loves banana bread. He always throws a banana bread/muffin mix into the cart when we're grocery shopping and I usually whip up the mix quickly after dinner as an after thought so that he can grab a muffin in the morning.

Well, it just so happens that we had three bananas that were PERFECT for creating banana bread. I had not made banana bread from scratch before so I set out to find a recipe. What better site to check than Joy of Baking? Armed with a recipe and all of the ingredients on hand, I was ready to roll!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped (I left these out)
• 1 3/4 cups purpose flour
• 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled 3 ripe large bananas, mashed well (about 1-1/2 cups)
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla (I only had almond, so I used that instead)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a loaf pan. Set aside
• Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl.
• In a different bowl, combine bananas, eggs, butter and vanilla.
• With a spatula, combine wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Do not over mix this.
• Pour banana bread mix into your loaf pan and bake for approximately 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

This was some mighty tasty bread! The almond flavor was just enough to give this banana bread a good change of pace. My husband was working late so I decided to wrap it up and leave it for him when he got home. I knew I would be asleep long before he came home so I left him a note to let him know I was thinking about him....

This morning he took a few more slices with him to work. Sounds like a success to me!