Black bananas

Everyone has, at some point in their grocery-shopping lives, bought too many bananas. The “On Special” signs in neon orange entice you, and you walk, mesmerized, to the pyramid of yellow-green fruit, stacked high, proudly occupying the sweetest spot of the produce section. Your grocery cart, most likely empty, longs to be filled, and you oblige, putting bunch after bunch of half-ripened fruit into the welcoming arms of the metal food-cage.

It isn’t until you reach home that you discover that you have made a terrible mistake.

If you are like me, you always, always, buy too many bananas. Every trip to the grocery store seems like it is not complete without the purchase of at least 1 banana, and I come home only to find that I already have 2 waiting for me, disapprovingly it seems, yellow almost to the point of over-sweetness. Don’t get me wrong – I like bananas as much as the next person; I just seem to have an inability to gage my banana needs. So it is inevitable that, every two weeks, I place one or two bananas, ripened beyond consumption, into my freezer.

I now have 12 bananas, blackened and freezer-burned, wrinkled and frankly quite creepy-looking, waiting to be used, and so I was extra-excited when I got a phone call from the lovely A asking me to come over for a banana bread baking party.

After 2 hours of (catching up, job talk, school talk, gossip, laughing) baking, we produced is likely our most bestest creation to date: a lovely, chocolate-y, banana-y banana bread. It was moist but not dense, with a lingering banana flavor that is not so intense that it overpowers the other flavors, the most pronounced of these being dark chocolate and the subtle, deep sweetness from molasses in the dark brown sugar.. The top of the bread was slightly cracked and a dark brown – perhaps a little too brown for some peoples’ liking, but which gave the bread a faintly nutty taste and an unexpectedly crispy bite. Overall, a baking success, and we didn’t even have measuring spoons (but A is getting on that).

Banana bread

Modified from allrecipes.com

Ingredients

-       3-4 over-ripe bananas (small-medium sized)*, mashed

-       2 cups of flour

-       ¾ cup of brown sugar (preferably dark)

-       ½ cup butter of margarine, room temperature

-       2 large eggs, room temperature

-       1 tsp baking soda

-       Pinch of salt

-       Semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips (optional), to taste (about 1 cup)

·      If using frozen bananas, microwave for 20 seconds or until skins can peeled off and banana mashes easily

1.     Pre-heat oven to 350F and grease an 8” baking pan.

2.     Stir flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl

3.     Add butter and sugar, to flour mixture and cream until well-incorporated (mixture will still be a bit dry)

4.     Add the mashed banana and the eggs, and stir together until the batter is smooth.

5.     Add chocolate chips to taste (we added the equivalent of about 1 cup).

6.     Spoon mixture into the pan and even out slightly – don’t worry about making the batter completely even, as the bread will rise and crack slightly.

7.     Bake for 50-65 minutes, or until tester comes out clean

8.     Let cool for 10 minutes (if you can) before cutting, to allow the bread to firm up slightly.