Banana Bread

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:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F, and grease a loaf pan {I sprayed with cooking spray to avoid using more butter}
2. In a large bowl, mash the ripe bananas with a fork until smooth. 
3. Stir the melted butter into the bananas.
4. Mix in the baking soda and salt. Stir in the sugar, beaten egg, and vanilla extract. 
5. Mix in the flour.
6. 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}
7. Remove from oven and cool completely on a rack. 
8. 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

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Banana Bread