I owe an apology for not writing a blog sooner. Life has been busy lately between getting out and enjoying the amazingly lovely fall weather and beautiful leaves, MOPS, Usborne Books and More book parties, celebrating birthdays and pregnancy announcements with friends, researching mortgage loans, homeowners insurance, looking at houses, a snotty (literally snotty) baby, allergies on my end…. life sometimes just takes priority… I had planned my next blog post to be along the lines of cloth diapering and how to clean them, making my own diaper detergent and using cloth wipes…but I think I will save that post for a little later. Who knows, maybe we will get two posts done in one day! Now that would be pretty impressive on my part! Due to feeling unwell and the baby being, like I said before, snotty, we decided to lay low for the weekend and try to nurse ourselves back to health by resting and not spreading our cold (if that is what it is).

This morning as I am writing, I have a baby who just woke up from a little morning nap, she is lying in her rock and sleep playing with her toes, she just pulled her socks off. She is all smiles right now, and it warms my heart. I have a cup of hot black tea next to me, and two loaves of my banana chocolate chip bread in the oven baking (it smells delicious!) there is nothing like a piece of fresh bread, no matter the kind, right out of the oven with some softened butter spread across it, still hot. YUM! Now you are wishing you had my recipe aren’t you? I’ve been baking this same recipe since 2005, sure I have tweaked it over the years to make it mine, but it is definitely a keeper. I am not usually one to share recipes of my own because, well I am selfish and like to keep my favorites to myself and for my family. However, today I am feeling generous and had no idea what I was going to write about until, well, until I started writing. Sometimes that is just how it goes.

BANANA CHOCOLATE CHIP BREAD

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 C Butter (1 stick) room temperature
1 C Sugar
3 Eggs (well beaten)
3 C Flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
2/3 C Buttermilk
1 C Mashed Bananas
1 C Chocolate Chips

(Here is where I make some personal changes, we don’t keep cows milk in our home, so we use unsweetened vanilla almond milk. I add just a little bit of vinegar to it, to give it the “buttermilk” taste so to speak. Instead of regular semi-sweet chocolate chips we use dark chocolate chips, and I tend to just eyeball it rather than measure. I have a tendency to buy bananas and then not eat them in time, when they are starting to brown I toss them in the freezer and save them for when the mood strikes me to make banana bread. Frozen bananas like this are GREAT for banana bread! So I grab 4 (yes 4), I know that this is much more than a cup, and I let them get room temperature or nuke them in the microwave to get them soft enough.)

I use my handy Kitchen Aid mixer that my husband bought me a couple of years ago for Christmas.

Cream butter then add sugar, beating until light and fluffy.
Add beaten eggs.
In a separate bowl mix together flour, baking soda, and salt, sift together so it is mixed well. Then add to the mixing bowl, once that is all blended together add the rest of the ingredients.

Grease two bread pans (7×4), put batter evenly into pans and bake for approximately an hour. I usually put mine in for 45 minutes and watch it closely after that as to not burn it. When you can put a toothpick in and it comes out clean the bread is done!

Remove from pans and ENJOY!