Banana Bread

I had been thinking about making banana bread for a while and, as usual, my local grocery store had plenty of over ripe bananas, wrapped and ready to come home with me. I love that they sell fruits and veggies that are just past ripe at a fraction of the original cost. Some stores don't do that. I'm told they just throw them out! It seems so wasteful.
Anyway, I thought I'd try a few different recipes and see which I liked better. The first one is from Molly Wizenberg. I believe she has it in her book " A Homemade Life", which I really want to get around to reading some day soon! But I found the recipe here.
It sounded a little bit different, with the addition of crystallized ginger and chocolate chips.
I baked another recipe to compare and I'll try to post that one tomorrow..not promising!
I really liked this banana bread. It doesn't have any spices in it, such as cinnamon or nutmeg, like the other one. Kris really loved it! I did love the chocolate chips and the crystallized ginger gave it a little chewiness.
One change I had to make was that I bought a low fat yogurt by mistake so all I had in the fridge to use was creme fraiche that I'd made and that worked just fine.


Banana bread is an easy recipe to make because you do all the mixing in just a few bowls and it's all mixed by hand so you don't even have to drag out the big mixer.
Just combine all the ingredients together and stir.

Then throw in the dry and stir gently til it's all combined.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake.

Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger ( adapted from Molly Wizenberg's book).

6 tbsp. unsalted butter

2 cups unbleached AP flour

3/4 cups sugar

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

3/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas ( approx. 3 bananas)

1/4 cup well stirred whole milk plain yogurt ( I used the creme fraiche)

1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Butter a loaf pan.

1. Melt the butter and set aside to cool.

2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.

3. Add the chocolate chips and crystallized ginger. Stir well and set aside.

4. In a medium bowl, lightly beat eggs with a fork. Add banana, yogurt, butter and vanilla. Stir well.

5. Pour banana mixture into dry ingredients. Stir gently til just mixed. Batter will be thick and somewhat lumpy but all the flour should be incorporated.

6. Scrape into prepared pan and smooth the top.

7. Bake 50 minutes to an hour or when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. If the top is getting too browned, tent top with foil.

8. Cool in pan 5 minutes. Then take out of pan and cool completely before slicing..if you can wait that long!