Banana Bread +

As I'm typing this up, the banana bread is busy doing its thang in the oven, but I'm realizing that I plum forgot the 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt.  It isn't the end of the world, but let's give the type A control freak part of me a minute.  She'll be all right.


Ingredients
1/2 cup butter (that's 1 stick) at room temp
1 cup granulated white sugar
2 large eggs at room temp
1 1/4 cup (3 large bananas) mashed bananas at room temp
1/4 cup milk (I used 1%, but whole is best)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup golden raisins (optional)
1/4 cup dried cranberries (optional)
1/4 cup of chocolate chips (optional)

Word to the wise - room temp ingredients will prevent lumpy curdling weirdness when you mix your wet ingredients, but if what you use, with the exception of the butter, is cold, the bread will still turn out just fine.

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350° and grease an 8" x 8" pan, or line with parchment paper.  I do the parchment.  You may use whichever pan you'd like.  Muffins (yields 12-15), mini loaves (yields 4), whatever you have, it'll do.  

2. Cream butter and sugar with mixer. Combine first on low speed until combined and then increase for 3 minutes until light and fluffy.

3. Add eggs to the mixture one at a time, incorporating after each addition.

4. Add bananas to the mixture and blend on low until combined. If your mixture looks less creamy than you'd like, like a globby mess of banana bits and fat that refuses to mix together into a decent-looking batter, that's all right.  Chances are, your bananas, eggs, and / or butter weren't at room temperature.  Not a big deal at all.

5. Add the milk and vanilla to the mixture and mix just until combined.

6. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt to the mixture. (I don't mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl before adding to the wet and it turns out just fine every single time.)  Mix on medium speed until just combined.  Please do not overmix.  That's asking for trouble.  You might want to take a spatula and check for any patches of flour that might be hiding.

7. Use your spatula to add dried fruit, chocolate chips, nuts, whatever your heart desires into the batter.  Or none, if that's what you prefer.  I put my fruit into the batter and saved my chips for the next step.

8. Pour batter into prepared pan and smooth surface. I sprinkled chocolate chips atop half my pan, only because the chips were starting at me in the face and well, how could I ignore them?

9. Bake for 50-55 minutes, until a toothpick in the center of the pan comes out clean. No wet goop on that toothpick and you're good to go. If you use a muffin pan, you'll only need 22 - 30 minutes, so check the oven after minute 20.

10. Take your banana bread out of the oven and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.  After this initial settling period, if you greased your pan, wedge a butter knife around the edges to release the bread from the pan.  Move to cool on a wire rack.  If you used parchment paper, you can lift the bread out of the pan and set it to cool on the wire rack.

Serving
It's tasty served warm immediately, cooled and served later, or can even be frozen and brought back to room temp two weeks later.  I'd recommend bringing it to the office so that you don't eat the whole dang thing on your own.  I speak from experience.