Hello , I hope you're happy, healthy. And if at all possible, you are staying safe and sound at home. If you are not at home, it is likely because you are one of the incredible essential service workers out there facing this pandemic on the frontlines day after day after day.
And if that is the case, first of all, I want to thank you so much for your amazing contribution. I can't tell you how grateful we are for all of the hard work you're doing.
Now my family and I have been practicing our social distancing for several weeks now. And I have to say that I don't think I've ever done so much baking in my life.
And it's kind of strange because the truth is, I don't really fancy myself much of a baker. If you guys have watched the blog for any length of time, you probably know I don't do a ton of baking on the channel. I'm much more of a cook I sort of love the fluidity and the flexibility of cooking. It's more art than science, which I really like. But for some reason I have just felt compelled to bake during this pandemic. And so I thought it would be fun to share with you guys one of my very favorite recipes.
This is actually my grandmother's banana bread recipe. It's A total classic in my family. And it's also one of the first recipes I ever made as a kid myself. So it's very, very close to my heart and it's really simple to make.
Now I will admit the whole catalyst for making this recipe for you guys are these guys I found some bananas that had gone super ripe and has almost seen their day. And I thought what better way to use them than my making some banana bread. So here we are. Now this recipe starts as many baking recipes do by mixing up our dry ingredients. So to do that, I'm just combining some all purpose flour with some baking soda. This is how we get that nice sort of fluffy texture in our banana bread. And I'm going to use my whisk to really get it well incorporated. Guys, I almost forgot the salt. With your dry ingredients, you want to mix in your salt as well. About half a teaspoon. I'll give that a good whisk until they're very well combined. And then I could just set my dry ingredients aside, my next step is going to be mashing up my bananas and I am super jazzed because these bananas are really really ripe, which as you may or may not know always results in the absolute best banana bread, the riper your bananas are, the sweeter they are and the more delicious your banana bread will be. So these are actually perfect. If you ever find yourself with really ripe bananas and you're not quite ready to make your banana bread, you can also store your bananas in the freezer, and they can just hang out in there until you are ready to bake with them. Really, really handy.
I often do this because I find myself with right bananas quite a bit, I guess I always buy too many. Now at this point, our job is just going to be to run our potato master through our bananas pretty easy when they're this right because they're super soft and squishy.
They have kids in the house now is a great time to get them involved.
Why should you do all the hard work? There you go. So to large bananas will usually make about a cup of mashed banana.
If your bananas are a little smaller, go ahead and use three, you're basically looking for a measured cup. Our next step is to mix up our wet ingredients. Starting with some room temperature butter, I'm just going to be using a hand mixer to get in there and get that butter nice and light and fluffy.
Then I'll get my sugar into the bowl and continue to beat that for another 30 seconds to a minute.
Now it's time to add our eggs to this. So I'm going to go ahead and crack one egg into my bowl. And I'll get my second egg in here as well. I'm also going to be adding some milk. And not to worry about the exact measurements here they are all linked below. I'm also going to be adding an a splash of vanilla extract to this because vanilla extract makes everything taste so darn good. Then we're just gonna start to beat this on low.
I'll continue to make this until it's really well combined. And then it's time to bring everything together.
So first step I want to add my mash bananas into my wet ingredients. I'm going to give that a really quick mix. And then I'll add my dry ingredients to the bowl and mix them up until they're just Incorporated. So I've got my loaf pan already prepared. You can see I have greased it liberally with some butter. Really important to grease your loaf pan liberally because of course you do not want your loaf sticking inside.
And now it's just a matter of transferring all of my batter into the loaf pan. I should mention that if at this point you wanted to add some chocolate chips or some walnuts or even some blueberries that would be super incredible. The base recipe is really really simple and you can kind of add whatever you want to it.
So the sky is sort of the limit. Now that my battery has been transferred into my loaf pan. I just want to give it a couple quick taps. We'll get this into the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. For between 50 and 60 minutes you really want to see a nice golden color
on top.
And when you stick a toothpick in the center it should come out completely clean. That's how you know it is ready.
Now I always recommend allowing it to cool for five or 10 minutes before serving which guys I know is kind of challenging at this point because it smells so delicious. But trust me it is worth the weight. I like slicing it and then serving it with some butter. Oh my gosh guys, what could be better than homemade banana bread.
Your whole family is going to absolutely adore you for being so thoughtful. And everyone gets to enjoy it. It is a win win win.
I hope you guys will give this delicious recipe a try and if you do, be sure to tweet me Instagram or Facebook me a photo because you all know how much I love seeing your kitchen creations. Remember, the full recipe is linked in the description box below.
You can find it there. And finally if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe because there is lots more deliciousness where this came from.
