We had a lot of bananas hanging around the house this week. I ate one almost every day in the morning, but I purposely left three bananas in the house and watched them as they got very ripe – overly ripe unless you had a plan for them. All week I had a plan – I was going to make a homemade loaf of banana bread over the weekend for us to enjoy next week. 

Sunday mornings are usually a very low key time in our house. Coffee, news, newspapers, occasionally pancakes, and always more coffee. This Sunday morning was a perfect time to make banana bread.  I started the banana bread even before my morning coffee or breakfast! The recipe is so simple: 
Ingredients 
2 eggs
1/2 C butter, softened 
2 teaspoons vanilla 
cinnamon (about a teaspoon) 
nutmeg (about 1/2 a teaspoon)
1/2 C brown sugar
scant 1/2 C white sugar 
2 cups all purpose flour 
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 large ripe bananas 
1 tablespoon milk

Instructions 

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees
Grease the bottom and sides of a loaf pan (I used coconut oil spray from Trader Joe’s)

Cream together the sugars and butter. Once well combined, add one egg at a time, mixing after each egg. Add vanilla and mix.

In a second bowl, mash together the bananas with the cinnamon, nutmeg and milk. Once the bananas are at a good consistency, add them to the butter and sugar mixture. 
In the second bowl, add the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. I like to stir this mixture together to let the flour get a little more air into it. Add the dry ingredients into the wet, and only mix until the flour is incorporated – you do not want to overmix once the flour and dry ingredients are incorporated because you do not want the gluten to become over-activated. 

Pour the batter into your pan. It might be thick, and that’s ok. When I first made this recipe, I was surprised by how thick the batter seemed and I was worried that the bread would not come out like I expected or wanted it to. 

Put your loaf pan in the oven, set the timer for one hour. When the timer goes off, stick a tooth pick in the center of the loaf and if it comes clean, the banana bread is done.Let the loaf pan cool on a wire cooling wrack for a few minutes (about ten?) Then take the banana bread out of the pan and let it continue to cool on the wire wrack. Slice and enjoy! 

Normally I love my banana bread with a little peanut butter, Brummel & Brown or plain ol’ butter. But this bread was so scrumptious I did not need anything on top of it! I just ate it plain and it was delicious.