The Best Banana Bread Ever

If you have an aversion to butter, you can stop reading now. If you like nice, rich banana bread, this recipe is the bomb.

Monday afternoon we returned home from our weekend away to a bowl of bananas past their prime. When faced with overripe bananas, I make banana bread.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with many recipes, but I have never really settled on one that I return to again and again. Last fall, I tinkered with a recipe from a Martha Stewart cookbook and hit the payload. It’s moist and light and bursting with banana flavor. My version substitutes plain yogurt for the sour cream and replaces half the white flour with whole wheat – a nod to health consciousness and a way to rationalize eating a slice for breakfast.

You can add walnuts or pecans, but this time I threw in about ¾ cup of chocolate chips. Either way, it’s delicious and makes a great addition to a brunch menu or a welcome offering in the staff lounge. Bon appetit!

Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips

1 stick of butter, softened
¾ c sugar
2 eggs
¾ c unbleached flour
¾ c whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
½ c plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup mashed ripe banana
¾ c semi-sweet chocolate chips or nuts

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and butter a standard loaf pan. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in eggs and beat until well combined. Sift together dry ingredients and then add to the wet ingredients, mixing to just combine. Add yogurt, vanilla and banana and stir well. Mix in chocolate chips or nuts.  Cook for 1 hour until browned and a tester comes out clean. Turn out onto a rack to cool.

Doom & Gloom Blueberry Muffins

Our Saturday paper arrived with news of a potentially devastating fruit fly outbreak in the region. According to the article, the Asian native, Drosophila suzukii, is particularly aggressive and multiplies, well, like fruit flies. Actually more so. A single season can see 10 generations of the pest.

Their habits are not only destructive, they are quite disgusting. Unlike typical fruit flies that attack rotting fruit, in this case they go after the good stuff – decimating crops before they are harvested and sold. The female fly deposits eggs inside ripening fruit and the larvae eat the fruit from within; whereby what looks good on the outside eventually collapses into a rotten heap.

Turns out the flies aren’t selective either, feasting on all manner of berry and stone fruit. Researchers at OSU are racing the clock to study the little buggers, and to determine an effective method for controlling or eliminating the pests, which have the potential to lay waste to Oregon’s multi-million dollar fruit crop.

Berries are a summer ritual and a perennial favorite in our household, so I’m hoping their efforts are fruitful. Perhaps a delivery of these tasty muffins will spur them on in their efforts. Go science!

Blueberry Muffins

¾ stick of butter (melted)
1/3 cup of milk
1 whole egg + 1 yolk
1 tsp vanilla
1 ½ c flour
¾ c sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 c blueberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together wet ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry; mix until just combined. Don’t over mix! Spoon into greased muffin tins. Bake 18-20 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Makes 12 smallish muffins.