Banana Bread

Last week I got a hankerin' for banana bread. So I picked up a few bananas and set out to find a recipe. I planned on using the one I grew up with, from Better Homes and Garden Cookbook.


I was on the phone with my mom when I started pulling out ingredients yesterday afternoon. I realized I didn't have shortening (ew!) and Mom reassured me that regular vegetable oil could be substituted. Well, I was out of that! Mom insisted that flaxseed could be ground up and substituted for cooking oil. I was doubtful, but we had flaxseed (who lives here?) which I ground up and got ready to go.

Uh oh, no baking soda.

Luckily, AllRecipes.com has a great search feature where you can determine what ingredients you want to use and those you don't want to use. I use this website for all of my baking, anytime I come up with a recipe I haven't made in a while, I look it up and then sift through the options until I find one I'm comfortable with (or combine a few).
After some searching, I picked this recipe.
However, just like with knitting, I like to wing it. Since I had already ground some flaxseed (about 1/4 of cup) I decided to use it with less butter. I didn't have the full cup of brown sugar, so I used what I had (about 1/2 cup) with the rest white sugar. Oh, and I only used 3 bananas and no walnuts.

Despite all my fiddling, it turned out great!

I kept a bit of the batter back, added chocolate chips to it and baked it in a ramekin-so delicious! When I go to the store to pick up all the basics I'm out of, I'm definately getting more bananas and making this again with chocolate chips throughout.

The banana bread is definately more like a dense cake than a true bread, but it isn't sweet at all. It's just dense and hearty with a faint hint of banana. Perfect room temperature, but I like to warm it up and spread it with cream cheese for breakfast. As a kid, I would take my mom's banana bread (or zuchini bread, yum) and spread it with peanut butter for an afterschool snack.
Hmm...I'm not too old for that, right?