Alyson's Banana Bread

When I worked at a local nonprofit, one of my co-workers was Ms. Alyson. She was a native Georgia girl who had moved out to California a few years back and missed her mama’s cooking.  This bread reminded her of home and I ended up baking two…one for her and one for the staff! 

Oh one more little thing, Alyson was Ms. Wheelchair California in 2009 and runner up at Ms. Wheelchair America. Yes, I do know some celebrities…check out her blog! This is adapted from one of Paula’s recipes.

Alyson’s Banana Bread

½ cup of butter at room temperature

1 cup of sugar 

½ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon maple flavor or extract

1 ½ cups flour (sifted)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

4 ripe bananas

¼ cup to ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 

cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a (9” x 5”) or (11”x 4”) loaf pan with cooking spray. Mix together the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and stir well. Add salt, eggs, vanilla extract, maple extract (if you don’t have maple flavoring/extract in your cupboard, don’t worry about it…but it gives the bread such an added sweet flavor), flour, baking soda and baking powder and mix well with a spatula. Set aside. 

Peel all bananas and using the back of a fork, mash up the fruit. 

Add mashed bananas into bowl and stir until well combined. Pour the batter into prepared pan.

Using your hand, sprinkle chocolate chips along the center of the batter. This will make the chips sink down a bit and melt toward the top of the loaf.

Bake for 50 minutes. Check by inserting a toothpick in the center of the loaf and it comes out with a few crumbs. 

Cool in pan for about 10 minutes then turn out into a wire rack. Since the bread will be warm, place the loaf on a long serving dish and slice.