Easy Banana Bread

Banana Bread is the one single single recipe that I mastered when I started to give baking some importance parallel to my cooking. One of the main reason for baking the banana bread was because often I was left with huge numbers of soft mushy bananas in fridge, as sometimes my husband buys them in huge numbers without thinking that we can eat only so many of the bananas in one single day. And throwing away foods is not something I am very comfortable with. So most of the times I give them away before they start turning brown. But even so, sometimes I have spotted bananas in fridge that Ishaan does not like to eat and I am not a huge fan of the bananas. So after giving banana fritters and banana ice creams a try, banana bread seemed to me the only plausible option which anyone can enjoy. I have already posted the wholewheat Banana bread recipe which has a deep flavour and some chewiness to it, but this one with all purpose flour is a little different in taste. While the first one is more cake like this one can easily replace the white-bread at the breakfast. Lightly toasted and slathered with some butter or Nutella or any other nut based butter, this recipe is just the perfect one that I did not know I was missing.

Easy Banana Bread

 

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of room temperature unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup of white granulated sugar
• 3 soft spotted overripe bananas
• 2 large eggs
• 1 and 1/2 cup of white all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 cup toasted walnuts / pecans
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 350F or 180C.
• Lightly roast the walnuts in a pan and let them cool down.
• In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar together, until the butter becomes pale and fluffy. Occasionally scrape the sides to incorporate all the ingredients.
• In a separate bowl mash the bananas with a fork until mushy. If some bigger chunks of banana is left behind there is no need to worry.
• Add the eggs, one by one, giving each of them time to be properly incorporated with the batter.
• Add the mashed banana and mix evenly.
• In a separate bowl sieve the flour so that there are no lumps, with salt and baking soda.
• Mix the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in small batches, so that no dry flour lumps are left in the batter.
• Finally mix in the vanilla extract in the end.
• Lightly sprinkle some flour over the raisins and nuts, so that they don't sink to the bottom of the pan while baking and mix them to the batter only when you are ready to pour the batter into the baking loaf pan.
• Lightly grease 9*5 inch loaf pan with butter or oil and pour the batter in it.
• Bake the bread in a pre-heated oven at 350F or 180C for 50-60 minutes or until, when poked with a  skewer, it comes out clean or with some crumbs in it.
• If you feel the bread is turning too dark you can cover it lightly with an aluminium foil to prevent it from turning too dark.
• Once they are baked them the loaf pan out of the oven and let it sit for 10-15 minutes before you take the bread out of the pan and let it cool in a wire wrack.