Banana Bread

Again, I had a very large amount of very ripe bananas that needed to be used up relatively quickly. Banana bread seemed like the perfect thing to make. Quick breads always seem like such a wonderful comfort food on chilly winter days to me. Plus, I always think that I will freeze some for a rainy day. It never lasts that long ;)

Usually when I have extra bananas lying around I make banana chocolate chip muffins. However, I wanted to use up more of the bananas, so I decided to go with a double batch of banana bread. That used about 8 bananas and yielded 8 mini loaves. I made 4 with walnuts and 4 without. I prefer the ones with the walnuts, but I like the plain too. While making the bread, I realized that I was out of brown sugar, so I substituted white sugar and molasses (see below for substitution). They were just perfect. They looked perfect and tasted delicious. Another thing that I like to make sometimes with banana bread is honey butter. Just whip up some softened butter with some honey and voila! You have a delicious spread for not just banana bread, but also pancakes, waffles and countless other things. Just mix it to your taste. If you like it sweeter, use more honey.

Brown sugar is unrefined or partially refined and still contains the molasses. Molasses is the by-product of making refined white sugar. Generally, however, these days when you buy brown sugar, what you are actually buying is refined white sugar that has molasses added back into it. Light brown sugar contains about 3.5% molasses, while dark brown sugar contains 6.5%. If you run out of brown sugar but have white sugar and molasses on hand, there is a substitution. To make 1 cup of light brown sugar, combine 1 cup white sugar with 1 1/2 tablespoon of molasses. If you need dark brown sugar, combine 1 cup granulated sugar with 1/4 cup molasses.