Banana Bread

**Continuing with our fall baking, this was originally posted in July, 2009, but we make this at least once a month year-round.

I've never been much of a breakfast person. Generally, I'll workout first thing in the morning (on an empty stomach) and then I'm content to have a couple mugs of coffee while watching the Today Show and catching up on my emails. It might be 3 to 4 hours after I wake up that I get around to eating something solid.

Neither Parker nor the Irishman share my passiveness in the morning. They want their breakfast and they want it immediately. In fact, the first words out of Parker's mouth upon waking are, "I need food." We are so in trouble when he's a 6'4" teenager. I may need to buy whole cows to compensate.

Back to breakfast - I've already shared with you the breakfast burritos that I make quite often, but the boys don't always want something savory in the morning. As a result, I try to mix it up with sweet options as well. I've always loved banana bread, but I'm quite particular about it. I don't like my banana bread syrupy sweet, but I don't want it to have a dry, cake-like consistency either. So, I did what I normally do and I started playing with a bunch of different recipes until I found a version that I liked.

Here are our ingredients:

1 cup sugar

2 cups flour (you can do half whole wheat flour)

1 stick butter (room temperature)

2 eggs

3 ripe bananas

1 tablespoon milk

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. First, put your bananas in a bowl, add in the cinnamon and milk and mash it all together.

Now, add your butter and sugar into the mixing bowl (Remember, if you forgot to soften your butter, pop it in the microwave at half power for 20 seconds).

Cream them together until they're light and fluffy.

Look at these great eggs that I got at the farmers market. They reminded me of the eggs that we got from our neighbor's hens in Greece - no two are uniform in color or size.

I'm going to add two lovely, uneven eggs (one at a time).

Now, go ahead and add in your banana mixture...

...and mix until just combined. Then slowly, add in the flour mixture (I went ahead and added the baking powder, baking soda and salt into the measuring cup with the flour and gave it a quick stir)...

...and mix until all of the flour is incorporated.

Pour your banana bread mixture into your pan of choice. I chose to bake my banana bread in an oblong casserole dish, but certainly a loaf pan or muffin pan would be the more traditional method.

Bake your bread until it is golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out dry. Keep an eye on it because muffins might take as little as 15 minutes while a loaf pan might take a little bit over an hour. My casserole dish took about 50 minutes.

Mmmmm. It's moist and delicious and if I'm being honest, it barely lasts two days in my house...even if I'm here alone. So go forth and bake some banana bread, your won't regret it.