Banana Bread

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Mash bananas with a fork. Semi-melt butter in the microwave for easier mixing. Stir banana, eggs, sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl until fully blended.  Mix in the remaining ingredients until thoroughly blended.

Add the optionals that you desire.  Pour the batter into a greased or non-stick 9x5 bread pan. Bake 65-70 minutes or until golden brown. Then remove from oven, let rest 10 minutes before removing from the pan. After 10 minutes, remove and let cool completely on a rack (approx. 1-2 hrs).

*Use RIPE bananas for the best taste. Ripe bananas are soft and the exterior peel is yellow with many small black & brown spots. Hard yellow/green(ish) unripe bananas are too starchy and have much less banana flavor. FYI – Beautiful pure yellow bananas are not fully ripe!

• If you use UNRIPE bananas, your banana bread will taste bland!!!
• Make sure to use 3 large bananas (not 3 medium bananas). Otherwise, this easy banana bread might turn out to be a little dry.
• To reduce errors (e.g. potential moisture variability) when making this easy banana bread recipe, you should use EXACTLY 1 1/2 cups of mashed bananas. This will help prevent banana bread problems (e.g. the banana bread being too dry or too wet).
• Emergency tip – If you have less than 1 1/2 cups of mashed bananas, you can add a little milk to the measuring cup until you reach the 1 1/2 cup level.
• FYI – In general, 3 medium-sized bananas equal roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups of mashed bananas (not sliced bananas). 3 large-sized bananas equal roughly 1 1/3 to 1 2/3 cups of mashed bananas (not sliced bananas). Of course, banana sizes can vary greatly… and my version of medium and large-sized bananas may differ from yours!
• Emergency Tip 2 – If your bananas are not fully ripe, you can add 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon to this recipe. The use of unripe bananas results in a bland banana bread and the cinnamon helps to combat this “blandness”.
• This recipe is designed for making ONE banana bread. If you try to double the recipe, you are more likely to experience potential problems such as requiring longer baking times (if baking 2 banana breads at the same time), one pan potentially having more batter than the other pan (thus one banana bread baking faster than the other), etc.