Banana Bread

I have survived yet another week of student teaching. My reward to myself? Banana Bread baking. For church tomorrow.

I love banana bread. I think it's one of those things that there are a million recipes for . . . there are 1,640,000 hits for banana bread recipe on Google. And half of them are probably one recipe, differing by maybe a 1/4 teaspoon of something. But everyone has a favorite. This one seriously tempted me yesterday, but I didn't have all the stuff for it.

My favorite happens to come from the Gold Medal Flour "Alpha-Bakery Cookbook" -- which was probably also my first cookbook of my very own. Obviously I still love it. It's one of those kids cookbooks (apparently now out of print -- sad day) that has the pictures next to the measurements and this recipe is not simply banana bread, it's "B is for Banana Bread". Important distinction.

Anyway, I froze a bunch of bananas at the beginning of the semester because I never got around to eating them. Frozen bananas = handy, but coldddddd to peel.

Anyway, I'm glad they were there, because it's always a problem wanting to make banana bread without any overripe bananas. That's just not the kind of thing you can plan easily.

B is for Banana Bread

from Alpha-Bakery Cookbook, Gold Medal Flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (3 large)

3/4 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a loaf pan.

Mix sugar, banana, oil and eggs in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into loaf pan.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 60-70 minutes. Cool 10 minutes, then loosen sides of loaf from pan and remove. Let cool completely before cutting.

Makes 1 loaf.

I love this banana bread. It's everything banana bread should be.

Oh, and one of the joys of college life: I opened the cabinet to find leftovers on the top shelf with the containers this morning. One of my apartmentmates was tired last night and put them there by mistake. I love that in college you can blame doing silly things like that on stress or sleep deprivation, and it's fine. I feel like after college, you can't get away with things like that.