One Tasty Sunday: Molasses Banana Bread

We always have a bunch of bananas in our house...sometimes more than one.  Every time I go to the grocery store I always think "Hey, we need more bananas."  The problem is, a week later, it never seems to fail, I have a few left that are just too dark and too mushy to entice me to eat them.  Enter...banana bread.  I love it.  And I dare say, I have finally created my absolute favorite banana bread recipe.  Little Man and I just recently made some, and two entire loaves were devoured by us and some friends in exactly two days.  With this recipe, I'd say too many bananas will never be a problem again.  Introducing...

MOLASSES BANANA BREAD














Ingredients:

4 Cups of flour (your favorite kind)
1 1/2 Cup dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 Cup banana yogurt
4 eggs
1/4 Cup molasses
3/4 Cup butter, melted then slightly cooled
3 tsp vanilla
6 bananas, mashed

Here is the absolutely beautiful part about this recipe...

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Pour all the ingredients into a large mixing bowl.  Stir until combined.  Pour into two greased loaf pans.  Bake for approximately 60 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean from the center of the loaf.  Leave in the pan to cool. 

Because the recipe is so darn easy to make, it is a perfect treat to make with the kids.  So, here are some pictures of Little Man as sous chef once again. 

Learning how to use a potato masher...
we use this for anything and everything that needs to be mashed in our house!

If you are noticing the popcorn and variety of other things surrounding
Little Man on the counter, they are there because
he helped me collect all the ingredients we needed for the recipe. 

One of our cabinets at Little Man's height is stocked with food and baking ingredients that are safe for him to handle without breaking anything major or dangerous.  When we start cooking, I call out the items that we need from his cabinet and he gets it for us.  As you can tell from the plethora of extraneous ingredients on the counter, he still hasn't quite gotten the concept entirely.  But, he loves searching for the ingredients and bringing them to the counter, and he has learned the names of many new foods that way.  

Stirring all the ingredients together before putting the bread in the oven.

Little Man didn't ask to taste a single ingredient this time.  He probably learned that lesson quickly after the flour tasting while making Unky Bars.  Of course, though, he wanted a bite when he saw the bread come out of the oven!  He was amazed at the change the bread went through in the oven, and that gave us a wonderful opportunity to extend his knowledge about changes caused by heat.  He has a favorite episode of Sid the Science Kid about irreversible change and I'm expecting the next time he sees it, there will be some pretty cool "text to self" connections made.  I can't wait! 


**The original recipe I USED to make can be found here.