banana bread

My mother makes the best banana bread that I've tasted.  However, when I tried to use her recipe, mine turned out dry and not very good at all.  For the past month or so, I've been getting into that autumnal banana and pumpkin bread mood.  Since I've been feeling unwell this week and found myself with a batch of so-brown-they're-almost-rotten bananas, I decided to try out a recipe I had put aside for a rainy day (appropriately, it's raining today!).

I didn't have all the ingredients I needed on hand, but I had decent substitutes, so here's what I did and it turned out to be really quite delicious.

Makes one loaf pan's worth (9x3).  

Ingredients:

• 3-4 very ripe bananas, smashed up
• 1/3 cup melted salted butter (I used unsalted)
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar.  
• A note about the sugar: this amount does NOT make for a very sweet bread.  I really wanted the banana flavor to shine through and I don't like to over-sweeten things.  If you're looking for a flavor profile more like one you'd find at a bakery, increase to 3/4 or even 1 cup of sugar.  
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 
• I didn't have all-purpose, so I used 1 cup cake flour and 1/2 cup bread flour.
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 egg, beaten
• 4 ounces sweetened applesauce 
• I used sweetened, though unsweetened would probably be fine
• 1 Tablespoon bourbon (optional; I unfortunately didn't have this or even whiskey, but I want to try it next time for sure)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• Pinch of salt (since I used unsalted butter, I was generous with my pinch)
• Pinch of espresso powder (finely ground coffee powder, basically -- if you don't have this, just put in a tablespoon of brewed coffee)
• Pinch of ground cloves

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Mix everything together in a large bowl using a wooden spoon.  Don't over-mix.  Ideally, you should add the baking soda and flour last, so as to minimize over-mixing -- I didn't and it turned out fine, but I think I did get close to over-mixing the gluten.  
• Bake for 50 minutes to an hour (test it after about 45 minutes -- it's done when a tester comes out clean).
• Cool on a rack.
• Slice to serve.

Notes:

• You could easily add mix-ins to this recipe -- toasted pecans or walnuts, for example, or good chocolate chips (in which case I would reduce the sugar to 1/3 cup, unless you like it to be quite sweet).  I wanted to keep it simple but I think that mix-ins would be quite delicious too.  
• If you use smaller pans or make muffins instead, the baking time will be much lower.  Adjust accordingly -- start checking muffins at the 20-minute mark.
• I would choose 3 or 4 bananas depending on size and level of ripeness.  Mine were almost rotting, they were so ripe, so I used only 3.  However, if they're not as ripe you'll want to add one more just to get as much banana flavor in there as possible.