Banana Bread

photo needed

Recipe

3/4 cups margarine 1 1/2 cups sugar 4 bananas, mashed 2 eggs, well-beaten 1 tsp. vanilla 2 cups flour 1 tsp. baking soda 3/4 tsp. salt 1/2 cup buttermilk 3/4 cups chopped nuts or chocolate chips

Cream margarine and sugar thoroughly; blend in bananas, eggs and vanilla. Sift flour, soda, and salt together, stir into bananas mixture, alternating with buttermilk. Add nuts/chocolate chips, mix well. Pour into greased and floured loaf pan (large). Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour, 15 minutes or until the toothpick test indicates it's done.

My Notes

I always use chocolate chips when making this recipe.

I often make this recipe when I have four bananas that are well overripe. When I get bananas, I leave them out until they look tasty enough for me to eat, which is about a 5 or 6 on this scale:

stolen from here https://i.ytimg.com/vi/s5wQ6x6xI5s/maxresdefault.jpg

Then, I put them in the fridge so they stay at that ripeness for longer. The peel turns completely brown, but the banana inside stays at about a 5 or 6 for a few more days. If you still forget to eat the bananas, they should still be perfect for banana bread for a little while! They'll be super mushy and not something you would necessarily enjoy eating by itself, but they will make very sweet and delicious banana bread!

Make sure you don't leave them in the fridge for much longer after they start getting really soft, or everything in your fridge will smell AND TASTE like bananas.

I don't really use margarine anymore - pretty much every recipe that calls for margarine I substitute butter instead and I've never noticed a difference.

I also never have buttermilk on hand and I almost never want to buy a whole thing of buttermilk for one recipe, so I often use a buttermilk substitute:

Add vinegar to milk, with a ratio of one tablespoon of vinegar for every cup of milk. Stir, then let sit for five minutes before adding to the recipe. (So for this recipe, you would add one and a half teaspoons of vinegar to half a cup of milk.)

Bake times may vary significantly. In my oven, I have had to bake this for much longer than the hour and 15 minutes the recipe calls for - closer to an hour and 40 minutes. If the bread still jiggles when you attempt to move it, it still needs a lot of time. When you can insert a toothpick and remove it without any banana bread dough on it, it's done. Remember to insert in a couple different locations in case you hit a chocolate chip!

Story

I think this was originally my Nana's recipe? My mom often makes this banana bread as a gift or to go with breakfast. She frequently makes it with either walnuts or with chocolate chips.

Every time I've made this bread it's been a huge hit! One of my coworkers who claimed he didn't like bananas absolutely loved this bread.