One Banana, Two Banana, Three Banana, Five?

Peta has been drinking her banana smoothies quite a bit these days, but there always seems to be one that gets too brown. So we've taken to letting them ripen completely to increase sugar content and then chucking them into the freezer. Once we have three bananas, we can make banana bread.

We used different recipes last year, but this year we've settled upon the recipe in our The New Best Recipe book. This recipe calls for three bananas and is good, but the lack of more banana flavor has us wanting to add chocolate chips into the mix. Jim swiped a copy of the new Cook's Illustrated magazine this month and found a banana bread that calls for a whopping six bananas!

The first five are removed from the freezer and strained to collect the juice or microwaved to do the same. The liquid is then reduced by half to prevent a sodden bread and the result is a nice, flavorful banana loaf that does not want for chocolate chips. We added toasted walnuts and we and our weekend guests finished it in short order.

Are the extra two bananas and extra step necessary. Probably not. We'll do a side by side at some point and blog about that one in the future.

Jim and Peta