Banana Bread

So I haven't made anything in a while - life gets busy.
But this week my grandfather stopped by with about 4 bunches of bananas, and we already had one at home. Banana overload! So I decided to try making banana bread.

Recipe from allrecipes

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/3 cups mashed bananas (anywhere from 5-7; I used about six large bananas and had a bit left over.)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

3. Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

Poor late-night shot of the entire loaf:

Notes:

I added some cinnamon and ground flaxseed to the mix; I meant to add some vanilla too but forgot. I also sprinkled some raw sugar over the top.

Generally I don't wait around for bananas to get super ripe before baking with them, so what I do is ripen them in a toaster oven - I stuff them in a single layer on the rack and bake at 200 degrees for as long as it takes for them to blacken completely on the outside [around an hour or so.] Then I let them cool down before mashing them, but after this baking, they're completely soft and easily mashed [without the yucky brownness that comes with natural ripening.]

I also had a near-fiasco when I took the loaf out early - I thought it was done because toothpicks were coming out clean. AND, just to make sure, I took a knife and stabbed it at three different points near the center: they all came out pristine. HOWEVER, when I pried the sides apart a little later [when the oven had cooled down], I realized the inside was still batter. So I had to re-heat the oven and continue to bake it until the entire loaf was cooked through. [I covered the top with foil before this second baking so it wouldn't brown excessively.] Lesson learned: don't take things out early without making completely sure that they are cooked through.

FINAL VERDICT: It's a very dense and moist concoction that's extremely easy to put together! It also uses a ton of bananas so it's great when your kitchen is drowning in bananas. That might be an exaggeration. But I sure felt like that every time I set foot in my kitchen... until now, when there's just a nice loaf of banana bread on the table :]