So, today marks the last day of my sinfulness. Well, for a while anyway. I have had quite the last few weeks of binge-eating, which I define as eating whatever I damn well please. It has been glorious, I'm not going to lie and say I haven't enjoyed myself. But I feel like crap, and so that means it's time to get back to the clean. Before my time is done, however, I do want to share something: I baked. Yup, by choice and on my own, this girl right here baked. {oddly enough, my sister baked recently too- I don't know what's happening to us}
Someone somewhere told me that if bananas go brown, you make banana bread. I came across said brown bananas in my kitchen the other day and thought "I know I heard somewhere that you're supposed to do something with these buggers.... what was it?!" And then it hit me- BREAD! {ok ok people- I'm doing this for effect. Believe it or not, I do know that this is a commonly known fact. Come on- I'm not that big of an idiot}
So, because I don't bake and have no concept of how to do so, I set to Pinterest. Also through this process, I realized I may not have some of the key ingredients that one might need to make banana bread. Like, milk for example. I have coconut milk, I have almond milk, but not plain old cow's milk. Somehow, I thought to myself, that may not swap well.
I found my way to a recipe from Simply Recipes, that did not involve milk. Had only a few simple ingredients {another that I didn't have, baking soda. BUT I did have baking powder. OMG, wait, they're different? Really?! Again- duh. I googled that and learned you can swap it 2-3x powder for 1 soda. Win!}
ingredients:
2-3 very ripe bananas, peeled
1/3 cup melted butter
1/2 cup of sugar*
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda*
Pinch of salt
1-1/2 cups flour
instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F, and grease a loaf pan {I sprayed with cooking spray to avoid using more butter}
- In a large bowl, mash the ripe bananas with a fork until smooth.
- Stir the melted butter into the bananas.
- Mix in the baking soda and salt. Stir in the sugar, beaten egg, and vanilla extract.
- Mix in the flour.
- Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan. Bake for appx 1 hour or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. {test at 50 min- mine was ready just before 1 hour}
- Remove from oven and cool completely on a rack.
- Remove the banana bread from the pan. Slice and serve.
notes:
- In case you hadn't figured it out already... this recipe is NOT Paleo.
- A great thing about this recipe, especially for me, is that you don't need a mixer. Great for me, since I only have a weeny hand one and not a fancy stand mixer. I mixed everything in one bowl: mashed the bananas with a fork, and then mixed in with a wooden spoon.
- The best bananas to use are overly ripe and mostly browned ones- they makes the bread much sweeter. Because of this, I found that you also can decrease the sugar in the recipe drastically, which I did. *The original recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar, but I actually only used 1/2 cup and felt it was plenty sweet {and slightly less naughty!}
- Get ready for learning. *You can substitute baking soda/powder if you don't have any. If you are using baking powder in place of soda, you will need 2-3x the amount, and you should leave out any salt that is called for. Vice versa, you can use 1 part baking soda+ 2 parts cream of tartar to sub for baking powder. You'll need to make the "baking powder" mixture, then measure exactly what is called for in the recipe #schooled
