Banana Bread

We love bananas, we just can't eat them fast enough. We buy them about as green as they can get. We bring them home from the controlled temps of the store and a daw or two later they are yellow and on the third day they already have brown spots. By day four I have to start thinking of things to do with them.

We have tried those green food bags that are supposed to extend the shelf life of your fruits and veggies - if you haven't tried them - DON'T!  They made the bananas taste horrible, totally artificial.

We have frozen them too and Roger will enjoy them as a cold treat, but his favorite thing to do with them is for me to bake Banana Bread.

So today, since it's cold and rainy I thought i'd bake and share our favorite, easy banana bread recipe with you.

This is what you will need:

3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed (or more, I'll explain that later)
1/3 c melted butter
1 c sugar (can easily be reduced to 3/4 cup)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1 1/2 c flour

if you like you can also add 1/2 c of chopped nuts -walnuts or macadamia nuts and/or 1/2 or raisins or dried cranberries .

Preheat your oven to 350℉ (175℃)
First mash your bananas in a large mixing bowl, add butter. Mix in the sugar, egg and vanilla. Next sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix them in. Last but not least, add the flour. If you want to add nuts and/or dried fruit fold in now.

Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Sometimes I have 5 bananas (or 6 - Hey, we're in the tropics! We have lots of bananas!) and I'll just use them all. The more bananas, the more moist the bread will be. Roger loves it moist. For every extra banana you can add an extra tablespoon of flour. This might also change the baking time so check with a toothpick before you take your bread out of the oven.

Enjoy! and Aloha a Hui Hou!