Ingredients

• 1 cup plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 over-ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 325°F.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.  In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar until just blended.  Beat in the eggs one at a time.  Stir in the mashed bananas and the vanilla extract.  Add the flour mixture in two additions.

Butter a loaf pan, and pour the banana bread dough into it.  Bake for 60-75 minutes.  Let cool in the loaf pan.

Notes

If you were to measure a favorite recipe by how frequently it’s made, then this recipe is probably the top of our list.  We always have a bunch of bananas in the house, since my standard breakfast is a latte and a banana.  But we often don’t eat all of the bananas before they get too ripe.  So the leftover bananas go into a quart-sized freezer bag.  A quart-sized freezer bag holds 4 bananas perfectly, and thus it’s perfect for this recipe.  I peel the bananas, since I only ever use frozen bananas for banana bread; you can leave the peel on if you’re going to use your frozen bananas for smoothies or other purposes.  On the day that I bake the banana bread, I pull the bananas out of the freezer and let defrost for a half-hour or so, and then squish them around in their bag a bit.

The original recipe is based on the one found in Nigella Lawson‘s How To Be a Domestic Goddess.  The only changes that I make is that I don’t bother with the golden raisins or the walnuts.  I like my banana bread plain.

I tried a recipe for banana banana bread from the New York Times, and it’s not half as good as this banana bread.