By:  Kelsey Markovich, Dining Co-Editor

One of my favorite frugal-college-kid activities? Hoarding bananas from the Pit. I pay a solid $12 for that Pit swipe, and I am going to estimate that I eat about $5 worth of food, so you better believe I grab an extra banana or two (or three or four…) on my way out the door. Sorry I am not sorry. The pitfall here (pun intended) is that bananas do not last very long, and there are always the inevitable few left in my stash that are a bit too brown to be palatable. Luckily, there exists an insanely delicious solution to this problem: banana bread. This banana bread is not just any banana bread. Just when I thought it could not get any better, it did. I introduce to you the Peanut Butter Cup Banana Bread. Now go steal…er… “purchase” some bananas from the Pit.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 3 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 8 oz bag of Reese’s Mini cups

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Grease your loaf pan (I used an 8 x 4 pan) with butter or shortening.
3. In a medium bowl whisk together your flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, set aside.
4. In a large bowl stir together your bananas, peanut butter, oil, egg and sugars.
5. Pour your dry ingredients into your wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Batter will be lumpy.
6. Fold in your Reese’s Mini cups and spread batter into prepared pan.
7. Bake for approx 1 hour or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.
8. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then loosen the edges of the pan with a knife and remove from loaf pan, transferring bread to a cooling rack.

If you notice that the top of the bread is browning too quickly, a trick I always use is to just cover it with tin foil. Or you could alternatively reduce the heat to 325.