Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Cooking again--Banana Bread

After a lapse of about 9 months, I have finally started to do some cooking again! My first foray back into the kitchen was to bake 2 loaves of banana bread one Friday afternoon. I baked the 2 loaves (one with chocolate chips) and left them on the counter to cool while I met up with a friend. When I came home about 3 hours later, the chocolate chip loaf was almost entirely gone, and D was lying on the loveseat holding his belly. Yes, my husband had eaten an entire loaf (just about) of chocolate chip banana bread! D is generally a very healthy eater, but he does have his weaknesses--if there are sweets, baked goods, or Ben & Jerry's in the house he has no control over the quantity he eats! Whole pints of Ben & Jerry's disappear in a matter of minutes, a box of thin mint girl scout cookies might last 2 days, and banana bread vanishes in a flash.

Here's the recipe for the magical disappearing banana bread.

2-3 overripe bananas (the browner the better), mashed
1/2 c. canola oil
1 c. white sugar
1 egg
3 tbs. milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 c. flour (I use white whole wheat or AP)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 c. chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans) or chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Mix all ingredients well by hand.
Pour into greased and floured loaf pan.
Bake 1 hour to 1 hour and 20 minutes (depending on the pan and the oven--I used to do the full time, but with my current pans and oven just an hour seems to do the trick--more than that and it's too dark).

Here's a picture of the banana bread I made about a week later (someone bought bananas and then didn't eat them all week--I think he wanted me to make more banana bread).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Looks yummy! Do you remember those oatmeal, chocolate chip, walnut, and zucchini cookies we had one of the first days aboard the Cramer? (Sorry if you were too seasick to enjoy them and I'm just bringing back bad memories here...) They were kind of like zucchini bread, which I like almost as much as banana bread. It would be fun to try to recreate those cookies - they were really good.