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2 ripe bananas
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 / 3 cup margarine or butter, softened
1 3 / 4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 / 3 cup of sugar
1 / 4 cup mini chocolate chips (optional)

1. Oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease a loaf pan. Mash bananas with a fork in a large bowl. Add softened margarine or butter and mix with beater. Gradually add sugar and eggs to the mix and continue to beat.
3. Mix flour and baking powder together and then also gradually add to banana mixture until all ingredients are well blended. (Optional: At this time, add mini chocolate chips if desired.) Pour into loaf pan.
4. Bake about 60 minutes or until golden. Test with a toothpick until it comes out clean from the bread. Cool in pan for 5 minutes, loosen around the edges with a butter knife and then remove bread from pan to a wire rack to cool completely.
5. Optional – Double the recipe and make 2 loaves. Serve one now and freeze the other. This recipe freezes well!
6. ENJOY! – Bananas without the peel!

Bananas are one of the least expensive fruits to buy on a weekly basis. Whenever I shop at my Costco Warehouse, I always buy a bunch of bananas. The quantity is large and the price is small. My husband will eat a few bananas and then they start to get very ripe. That’s when I whip up my mini banana breads for shipping to the American soldiers. I bake about a dozen mini banana breads three times a month. I started to add mini chocolate chips at the suggestion of my daughter, Mia. Baking cookies constantly to ship to the soldiers can be a little repetitive, (so I try to add a little something different to the mix!) I like to send our heroes care packages consisting of a few dozen cookies with 2 or 3 banana breads thrown in for a little something extra.

Banana breads have been given by me for so many years to friends and family, I can’t even remember when I started to bake them. If someone comes to my house for a meal or I visit someone, I always have something baked to bring along or for them to take home. Come Christmas time, I just bake and wrap in Christmas bags and freeze. It is a great gift for someone elderly or too busy to bake for themselves. Banana breads as gifts are the most personal thing I could give someone.

I bought waxed paper liners that fit perfectly into my mini loaf pans, and it makes cleaning up so much easier. When you use the paper liners, the mini loaves just slip right out onto the wire rack for cooling.

I hope that all the people I love and all the soldiers I so admire experience as much joy in eating my breads as I do in preparing them!