Banana Bread

hafoc and I have differing views on what constitutes a ripe banana. He likes them just turned yellow, I like them freckled. Normally this works out well, he gets a big hand of bananas and eats them until they start to freckle and then I finish them off. As a result we don't have too many instances of multiple over ripe bananas.

However he bought a large hand of bananas and then left for ten days. I waited until they started to freckle and then did my best to get through them all myself but eventually you just have to admit that you aren't going to get through them all before they rot. So today, on what I judged was the day before ripe ticked over into over ripe, I made banana bread.

¹/₂ c butter, softened
³/₄ c brown sugar
2 eggs
2 ¹/₃ c mashed ripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla
2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
¹/₄ tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F, grease a 9x5" loaf pan.

Since I was feeling lazy and didn't want to clear a spot for my big KitchenAid stand mixer I mixed this up by hand with a "wooden spoon" made of plastic. Had I had my mixer out I would have done the standard method, cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, banana, and vanilla, then add the dry ingredients. Instead I mashed the butter and sugar together with the back of the spoon until I had a well blended paste then beat it a bit before adding the salt and soda by sprinkling it over the butter mixture and then beating it in. Then I added the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla and bananas. When those were well mixed I added the flour one cup at a time and sort of folded and stirred to wet it down before beating it a bit.

Pour the batter into the pan and smack it down on the counter a couple times to get it to settle.

Bake for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick (or knife or cake tester or whatever) poked in the center comes out clean.

Cool 10 minutes in the pan, turn out onto a rack, cool completely.