My mom makes the best darned banana bread in the entire world. End of story. Even by replicating the exact recipe, I can’t quite make it the same way. Maybe it’s that she uses the electric mixer to get the bananas extra well-blended. Maybe it has something to do with the pan or the oven… I probably will never know. I’ll just keep eating her banana bread when I’m in Kansas, and making my own in the meantime – even if she doesn’t make it, the recipe turns out great every time.

The thing I love about her recipe is that it’s pretty easy to play with, so that’s what I did here. It’s my mom’s recipe with a little extra sweetness and a little extra background flavor.

It’s a good thing the recipe is easy to play with, because I have this fun habit where I buy a bunch of bananas, we eat four of them over the course of the week and then we have 2 left that are too brown to enjoy fresh. So I toss them in a ziploc and put them in the freezer. And then that weekend at the store, I grab another bunch of bananas.

Cleaning out the freezer this weekend revealed that there are about 16 bananas in various packages in our freezer. Whoops. I guess we won’t be buying too many bananas for a while. And I guess there’s a lot more banana bread to come. (Oh, darn!)

1 1/2 cup AP flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3 Tbsp. buttermilk
2 Tbsp. bourbon
2 large or 3 medium mashed overripe bananas
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and grease a loaf pan.

In one bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar. In a second bowl, use a whisk to blend the eggs, oil, buttermilk, bourbon and bananas into a consistent mixture.

Pour the liquid mixture into the solids and stir to combine, using as few strokes as possible. When mixed, add in the chocolate chips with one final stir.

Transfer the batter/dough into the loaf pan and bake for 70 minutes. When finished, cool in the pan for 20 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool.