BA's Best Banana Bread

This is a banana bread I made awhile back.  We have a fruit bowl and work and at the end of the week there are always a couple of sad brown bananas, abandoned and left for the bin.  One Friday I had decided to rescue them and bring them back to life in the form of a delicious banana bread.

I’ve been a bit quiet the last couple of months.  Life got in the way and cooking was put on hold and that’s made me unhappy.

I attempted at a personality quiz a few weeks back, a version of the Briggs Myer that’s meant to reduce my personality into four traits through 2 pages of questions.  It was an interesting reflection as it's made me realize that food’s an exception to my otherwise nerve-wrecking and rigid life. Spontaneous? No, I think everything through in excruciating detail with contingency plans because there’s always that “in case shit happens” voice echoing in my head -- but I love cooking without a recipe.   I love seeing what’s left behind and just cook as it goes. It’s the only chance I get to be creative, and everyone needs a creative outlet.   Would you consider yourself original and think outside the box? I don’t feel confident in doing that at work, which dominates my life, so that’s sliding towards the extremely disagree side but I would like to think I can be original with food. Resulting from stupid amounts of cookbooks, online recipe browsing and cooking channels, I daydream about flavours and textures and that does make me think out of the box. Hard to concentrate? Yes. I can’t watch a movie without doing something else as well, like keeping a few tabs open for checking the news. But when I cook I am just cooking.

So take away the cooking and I’m left as a high strung stressed out individual.  New year's resolution is to cook and blog more.

 Recipe from Bon Appetit 
Ingredients
½ cups all-purpose flour
1¼ teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
⅓ cup mascarpone (or plain whole-milk Greek yogurt or sour cream)
¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs
4 large very ripe bananas, mashed (about 1½ cups)
½ cup chopped dark chocolate
½ cup chopped walnuts

Method
Preheat oven to 350F/180C.  Grease and line a 8.5 x4.5 loaf pan with parchment paper.

In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt.

Using an electric mixture, beat brown sugar, mascarpone and butter until fluffy, about 4 minutes.  Add eggs one at a time and beat until it's well mixed.

Then reduce heat to low and add flour mixture.  Mix until just combined and add bananas, chocolates and walnuts.  Pour batter into the prepared pan, smooth top.

Bake until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, about an hour.  Let bread cool for an hour in the pan before turning it out.