Mmm...Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

What I am about to tell you is a very sad truth...some of you may have to sit down before reading what is to come...

I must admit, that up to this point....I have never made banana bread in my life. I categorized "banana bread" with having to knead dough, and give the dough time to rise, and blah blah blah...work work work...NO THANK YOU!!!

But, having a little time on my hands, along with a husband who wouldn't let me throw out our bananas that were about to go bad...I thought that I was up for the task! So, to the laptop, I went, to find myself a banana bread recipe. It didn't take long at all...I came across a very basic recipe, one that had ingredients I have heard of and could pronounce (all very important). It also had a picture of what my bread should look like once finished. Here is the recipe I used from Simply Recipes:

BANANA BREAD

• Prep time: 5 minutes
• Cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

Method

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.
Yield: Makes one loaf.

This was such a super easy recipe!! I ended up using 4 frozen bananas. From the extensive research on the internet...the majority of people said it was best to just put your bananas in a bowl to thaw, that way the bowl would catch the water from the thawing process and you would put that water INTO the bread mixture...giving the bread good moisture!! It was a pretty funny procedure, when my bananas were mostly thawed, I cut a slit down the side of the peel and squeezed...and out plopped the squishy bananas. 

At the last minute, I decided to add a bag of milk chocolate chips. Note to self, one entire bag for this recipe was WAY too much. I felt like asking, "Would you like some banana bread with your chocolate chips?" Next time, I will cut it down to just half a bag. Overall, the bread was DELICIOUS!!! So so so good. No need for butter...just cut me a slice and my desire for dessert at the end of the day has been met! Mmmm Mmmm Good!!!

And since I'm not the best cook in the kitchen...I didn't have a regular sized bread loaf pan, so I used my mini loaf pans instead...so instead of cooking them for the hour, as directed in the recipe, I started checking in on them after 30 minutes. Total oven time ended up being 50 minutes. Using the mini loaf pans worked out perfectly because I ended up having to walk to my neighbors house to borrow some flour (so cliche)...and so I tied a ribbon around one loaf pan and Emily and I walked it over to them as a "Thank You" gift! Emily struggled a little bit in handing it over, but she eventually did. LOL