The Best Banana Bread Fresh Out of the Oven

Cool Autumn days are the perfect baking days. Today was just that kind of day, and I had two ripe bananas just begging me to use them for banana bread.

I usually let my bananas get a little blacker than this, but I just couldn’t wait any longer! The banana bread still comes out delicious with this amount of ripeness.

So, I made myself a cup of coffee and whipped up this delicious, healthy-ish treat!

The recipe comes from my mom, but she actually got it from my great-great Aunt Helen. (so this is a treasured old family recipe!) I modified it just a tad. Part of the modification was on purpose and part of it was not 🙂 Usually, I make these into muffins, but I didn’t feel like cleaning the muffin pan when I was done so I used a 9 x 9 pan and it turned out beautifully!

The Best Banana Bread

INGREDIENTS

• 3/4 cup Brown Sugar (original recipe called for 1 cup)
• 1/2 cup oil (I used Extra Virgin Olive Oil. If you want to make these low-fat use unsweetened applesauce)
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Cup Mashed Ripe Bananas (approx. 2 medium bananas)
• 1 1/2 Cups White Whole Wheat King Arthur Flour
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 tsp Baking Powder (I used my new Argo aluminum free kind! love it!)
• 1 tsp Ground Cinnamon (I adore cinnamon so I add it to almost everything!)
• 1/4 cup milk….apparently optional, because I forgot to add it! I don’t feel like my bread suffered a bit from not using it though 🙂

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat oven to 350. Although since I used a glass pan I lowered it to 325
• In large bowl thoroughly mix together sugar, oil, eggs, and bananas. (I use my hand mixer to ensure the bananas are well mashed up with everything)
• In medium bowl combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon
• Add dry ingredients to banana mixture and combine well.
• If you actually do use milk you would stir it in at this point.
• For muffins lightly grease pan with olive oil. Just the bottom. If you do the sides they won’t rise well. Bake for 25-30 mins.
• For a 9 x 9 pan lightly grease pan bottom with olive oil. I use a paper towel to spread around a couple of tsps. Bake for 35-45 mins.
• The muffins/bread is done when a tooth pick comes out clean.

The Best Banana Bread fresh out of the oven!

And this is how it looks when it comes out of the oven. I promptly cut a piece and devoured it as soon as it was cool enough to pop in my mouth. Sometimes when I am feeling in need of an especially divine treat I will add 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips to the batter…

Enjoy and try to share!