Ever since I moved down to Miami, I have been making an attempt to embody the tropics with the food I make. At the farmers market we’ve been buying a lot of mysterious looking fruits. I am not sure I like them, since they all have strange textures. Nevertheless, I don’t think anything screams tropics more than bananas. Everybody loves them. I specially love the manzanos, which are small apple tasting bananas.

This is my mom’s banana bread recipe. It is amazing. Moist, sweet, and tastes best when warm. Since I like to play around with recipes I added a couple of ingredients, just to experiment. Let me tell you, banana, honey, and ginger are an amazing match. Their flavors layer, generating a beautiful sequence of taste: sweet, rich, and then spicy. It is nothing less than perfect.

Honey-Ginger Banana Bread

• 3 bananas
• ½ pound melted butter
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cups of sugar
• ¼ cup honey
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 2 cups of flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• Juice of half a lime

Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a meatloaf pan. This is a one-bowl recipe, I used a stand mixer, but you can easily do it manually.

In a clean bowl mash bananas, add melted butter and mix. Add eggs and beat until just well incorporated. Add sugar, then honey, vanilla and ginger. Mix in the rest of the ingredients until just well incorporated. Pour batter into meat loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes. The oven I have been using is still acting up. The original recipe calls for just 45 minutes it took mine 55 minutes. I suggest checking your bread for doneness at the 45-minute mark, and continuing to bake if not cooked. There is nothing worse than an over baked, dry banana bread. Let bread rest for ten minutes, before digging in. Will taste even better toasted next morning. Happy baking!