Banana Bread Recipe

Here is my great banana bread recipe. I got this out of a bread cookbook about 10 years ago.  I have loved this book but haven't made very many things out of it. It is considered my luxury cookbook. The author traveled the world in search of good bread recipes. He came up with a 735 page cookbook.

This recipe came from the islands of Hawaii. There was a women in a restaurant that is well known for this banana bread.  There are some tricks to making this so take note. We condensed the instructions to fit in our family book so I will give you the condensed version.

 

Banana Bread

Ingredients:

6 T	Butter at room temperature
1/3 cp	Sugar
2	Eggs, room temperature
1 ½ cp	Mashed bananas
1 ½ cp	All purpose flour
1 tsp	Baking soda
½ tsp	Baking powder
¼ tsp	Each: salt, and vanilla extract
1 cp	Coarsely broken macadamia nuts
½ cp	Shredded coconut
	Mini chocolate chips

Directions:

Mix butter and sugar until smooth add eggs one at a time. Mix in vanilla. Combine all the dry ingredients and mix. With spoon mix wet and dry ingredients just until wet. Do not over stir. Very gently add in coconut, chocolate chips and nuts. Grease or line with buttered wax paper 1 medium (8x4) loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. 

Mash your bananas by hand. Leave some small lumps. When you stir in dry ingredients follow instructions carefully.  If you over stir the bread will become tough.  There is a fine line when it comes to how smashed the bananas are and the stirring. The only time I use the mixer is for the butter, sugar and eggs. We added the chocolate chips to this recipe. If you don't want them leave it out. We have found that you get a better mix of bread and chocolate if you use mini chips but the regular ones work too. We just add chocolate chips until it looks right but I think it's about 1/2 cup per loaf. I also add more coconut. In our experimenting we found making more than 6 loaves at a time you lose some control of the mixing process so we have limited ourselves to that. You will need a very large bowl if you make it in this quantity. Be careful not to overcook the bread it will cause it to dry out some and it's just not as good.

This recipe is easier than I make it sound. You just need to follow the tips and you will get a great loaf of bread.  I have had many people tell me it tastes like a Mounds candy bar.

Have fun!

Afterthought: Frozen bananas are a little tricky to separate once frozen but it can be done.  Don't expect them to look pretty.  When they thaw out they become mush anyway. If you line bananas up vertically you can take a knife and pry them apart. Do this on a cutting board with a butter knife. Don't let them sit out and thaw then refreeze, they are just not appetizing later. For most families I recommend using quart or gallon bags with only one layer. Quart is the perfect size for one large blender of banana milk with one banana to spare if you like your smoothie more banana flavor. We pack in gallon bags and use the whole thing in one meal.  I pack two rows on top of each other in the gallon bags then we pry them apart.  Prying apart frozen bananas is easier when fully frozen. The less contact the bananas make with each other the easier it is.