Question: How old can bananas be when baking banana bread?
Answer: Pretty dang old.

Question: Can you bake banana bread in something other than a standard-sized loaf pan?
Answer: Yes. Yes, you can.

There are not many hard-and-fast rules I abide by in the kitchen. I attribute this to the fact that I am not afraid to fail or ruin a meal. With baking, I do reign myself in some as baking measurements are precise for good reason. Some kitchen rules of my own design? 1. Cook with music. 2. A glass of beer or wine often helps things run quite smoothly in the kitchen. 3. Cook for people you love, or just because you love it.

I haven’t baked banana bread in a long time. For some reason I had a memory of it being very difficult. I can’t imagine now what recipe I used that would make baking banana bread seem like a hard task—the food network recipe I used today couldn’t have been simpler. Mix some dry ingredients, mash bananas with milk and cinnamon, cream butter, sugar, and egg, add the dry to wet ingredients, and you’re done.

I don’t have a loaf pan in my house at the moment, so I used a shallow roasting dish and cut the recipe amounts by half. Serving with honey, as the recipe suggests, is delicious.

I am curious about just how ripe/overripe the bananas should be. The peels of my bananas were completely blackened—the older the banana, the sweeter the bread? Thoughts?