Banana Fig Bread with Gingerbread Sugar

I'm one of those people who counts the over-ripeness of a banana in terms of hours instead of days. One hour past perfectly prime and I'm not eating it.   So, needless to say, we end up with a lot of left-over bananas. I'm always looking for good banana recipes so they don't go to waste, and adapted this one to include figs and gingerbread sugar. It's delicious. I think the texture is a bit more cake-like, which I prefer, and the figs and spices from the sugar really make it special.

What you will need:
2 C All-Purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 C softened butter
3/4 C gingerbread sugar
1/2 C sliced, dried figs (or nuts if you prefer)
2 eggs
2 C (4 smallish) over-ripe bananas

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9X5" loaf pan.
In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients.
In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Reduce the speed to low and add the eggs and bananas util it is all blended. Now stir in the figs. Slowly add the flour mixture to the banana mixture until it is all well blended, scraping down the sides. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 60-65 minutes. 

Now you have a delicious, potassium-paked breakfast or snack. My kids even like it with a scoop of ice cream on top for dessert! 

Tips and Tricks:

- Waiting for butter to soften is something my patience quota is not built for.  I also seriously hate non-stick cooking sprays because they seem to go everywhere but the pan.  Instead, I put my cold stick of butter in my loaf pan and put them both in the pre-heating oven for 5 minutes. Now I have softened butter AND a lightly greased pan. boom.

- Don't have quite enough bananas? Add any kind of lunch box fruit cup (without the juice) or 1/2 C of applesauce instead. It won't be a bad thing to have little bits of pineapple or cherry floating around in there.

- Don't like figs? Don't worry about it! Add nuts, dates, raisins, or CHOCOLATE CHIPS!

- Don't have Gingerbread Sugar? You could use any of our specialty sugars in its place, except Peppermint...that would be weird.

*To order Gingerbread Sugar, please leave a message at www.facebook.com/BoutiqueTreatsSugar.