Banana Bread - April

     For this month, I decided to make some banana bread like I used to make during the summer. The first step was something I had lots of familiarity with because we had used it so much the past week: the creaming method. I made sure that the butter was at room temperature before I began, to ensure that it would turn out properly. The experience I got helped me to know that even though the recipe says to cream the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy, that just means for about a minute and thirty seconds. However, it also utilizes the muffin method, because the two mixture, the wet and dry, are separate until they meet in the end, and at that point in time, it's only for a little bit. The most fun part about making banana bread has to be mashing the bananas in a bowl. It's so much fun to mush something that's so squishy. Once my batter was done, I filled a jumbo muffin tin. My mom prefers them in muffin form instead of the bread kind, I don't know why.
     Once they came out of the oven, I let them rest on a cooling rack until they were cooled down. However, my mom ate one while they were still hot. Both my mom and I agree that they turned out pretty good. The smell was overpowering of bananas, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The crust was nice and golden brown, and it wasn't all lopsided looking at all. When I took a bite of it, the flavor of banana coexisted peacefully with the flavors of the bread. There were no tunnels whatsoever, and the texture was nice and moist like a good cake. Overall, I think I did a great job with identifying what mixing methods to use and executing them well to produce an overall good finished product. 

Ingredients
1 cup granulated sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs
3 ripe bananas
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Directions
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.
Cream the sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
In a small bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. Mix in the milk and cinnamon. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Add the banana mixture to the creamed mixture and stir until combined. Add dry ingredients, mixing just until flour disappears.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Set aside to cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove bread from pan, invert onto rack and cool completely before slicing.