Healthy (by comparison) Banana Bread

Recently, I've been on a banana bread bender. Eric, who usually eats a banana every morning, must be staging a silent protest because I keep ending up with overripe bananas. And what to do with overripe bananas other than make banana bread? Ideas welcome. 

That being said, I love banana bread and have now tried a handful of recipes. A friend of mine recently said, "banana bread is fruit," and while I wholeheartedly believe this to be true, there are certainly a lot of butter, sugar, and sour cream-filled bread recipes out there! 

This morning I found this recipe, which cuts the amount of butter and sugar in half (if not more) and still manages to taste delicious (I promise!). 

As usual, I tweaked the recipe a little. First, the recipe called for "four very ripe bananas" with the instruction to put three into the batter and reserve one to slice on top. I had five overripe bananas (read: too ugly to slice). I put all five into the batter. I actually think this is the way to go. The extra bananas seemed to add the additional moisture the bread needed since there was less butter. I also added one secret ingredient...

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (do it!)

A super cool technique I learned for getting the perfect "squishy" consistency for the bananas. Put them in a large Ziploc bag, squish by hand, cut a corner off the bag and squeeeeeze.

Another use for Ziploc! Nut crushing! Come on, mind out of the gutter, please.

I used dark chocolate chips...so delicious!

I also decided to make mini muffins instead of a loaf. I adjusted the cooking temperature to 350 degrees and cooked the muffins for 15 minutes.

Here is another fun trick I've learned. If you don't have enough batter to fill a muffin pan, ensure everything cooks evenly by filling the empty spaces with water.