gone bananas

The man has been trying to eat strictly paleo for the past few weeks, which is a nearly impossible task for me. I live for carbs.  But at least for dinner, I’ve been “good” and done it with him.  The only downside is that I’ve noticed I’m binging every few days, particularly when he’s not home. Usually it’s in the form of salty snacks which I haven’t eaten much of in the past year to begin with.

Yesterday, we had two bananas that were on the verge of ending up in the composter, and I can’t bear letting food go to waste, so I decided to treat myself so that there is something in the house a bit healthier than Doritos when I need a carb fix. I began searching the Internet for bread machine recipes that use bananas. I wasn’t happy with any of the recipes I found, so I took bits and pieces of each and put them together. Here’s what I ended up doing:

Ingredients:
2 very ripe bananas
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, VERY soft
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon yeast, heaped

Directions:In a bowl, mash the bananas, and mix with vanilla, butter, sugar and cinnamon.

It will look slightly lumpy, but that’s okay. It also will smell dangerously good. You are allowed to lick the spoon when you’re done.

Into your bread machine pan, add water, mashed mixture, and flour, then yeast. A tip that I’ve learned with this process is that you want to add the flour slowly so that you coat all the wet ingredients, heaping the flour slightly in the middle.  I then gently make a small indentation in the top of the flour heap, and add the yeast.

I put this on my generic bread setting with light crust.  There are no pics of the final product, but I assure you, this bread will not last long in my house. I would recommend trying it with a little bit of butter when it’s still warm. Typically when I take a loaf out, I lay it on its side and cut off about two pieces so that the annoying hole left by the mixer “disappears”, and then flip the loaf up and slice like normal. The “hole pieces” become my taste test.

This is a small loaf but absolutely divine. Can’t wait to try it again and add nuts! This is the first loaf I’ve made with fruit, so I’m glad it wasn’t a waste of time. Let me know if you try this, or what your favorite bread machine recipe is!