Cloverdale Banana Bread

I am not a banana bread fan. I like bananas. I buy them frequently, peel them and eat them. I just don't like them cooked.

Everytime I go to the produce store I buy a hand of bananas. Sometimes they get eaten before they turn brown. Sometimes not. They turn, I toss them in the garbage. What a waste.

And then one day I get to thinking. Just because I don't like banana bread doesn't mean that Kerry doesn't like banana bread. Maybe I can find a better use for those over-ripe bananas than letting them rot in the landfill. I've tried a few variations of banana bread recipe and I've come up with a pretty decent one that's easy to make. I've never actually eaten it myself. Kerry loves it and it doesn't last long once its out of the oven.

I call it Cloverdale Banana Bread, for no other reason than I live in Cloverdale and here's where I perfected the recipe.

1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup margarine
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
over ripe bananas - depends on how many I have, usually anywhere from 3 to 4 bananas

And there you have it. Ingredients that I usually have in the house around the same time the bananas are going bad. For the eggs, I buy farm fresh ones and often they are jumbo size, meaning I have 2 yolks in one egg. If that's what you use too, then only use one jumbo egg instead of 2 eggs.

Now for the fun part, the optional stuff. The above recipe stands on its own but Kerry likes a bit of variety so I might toss in a couple of handfuls of walnut pieces if I have them in the cupboard. Sometimes I'll shake in some cinnamon and pumpkin spice, but I guess other sweet spices like nutmeg would work in this recipe.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream the sugars and margarine in a mixer at medium speed or wherever you're comfortable at where the ingredients don't splash out of the bowl. Add eggs and mix well. Mash the bananas and add them to the bowl. Mix in the flour and baking soda. If you're planning to add any optional items, put them in now too. Pour into a bread loaf pan that's sprayed with baking spray and bake for an hour and then check with a toothpick to see if its done. If the batter sticks to the toothpick put it in for another 5 minutes and check again. With my oven I usually find the bread is ready somewhere between one hour and five minutes and ten minutes but other ovens may differ in their heating. Put it on a wire rack to cool.

And here's where Kerry takes over. At some point he knocks the loaf out of the pan and transfers it onto a plate and then he eats it. Not all at once of course, but it doesn't last long. Now he happily informs me whenever the bananas are getting too ripe that its time to bake banana bread. Like today. With all the heat we've been having those green bananas I bought 3 or 4 days ago ripened really fast. I ate one yesterday and it was already past the stage that I like to eat them.

Enjoy!