Sour Cream Banana Bread

1. Preheat oven to 325° F. Lightly spray three 8" x 4" loaf pans (these are my favorite pans) with non-stick spray and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, mash bananas with a fork or rigid pastry cutter. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine butter and sugar with a spatula. Add the eggs to one side of the bowl, and whisk them all on their own, without incorporating the butter/sugar mixture (no worries if a little bit gets mixed in). This is my way of not dirtying another bowl to whisk the eggs! Once the eggs are well whisked, add the sour cream and whisk the whole mixture together. Add 3 cups of the mashed bananas and stir to incorporate.
4. Whisk together the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in the same medium bowl that was used for the mashed bananas. Add these dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and then fold together until there are no visible pockets of dry ingredients.
5. Decide how you want your banana bread...plain, with chocolate chips, or with maraschino cherries. See "Banana Bread Options" below.
6. Place pans in preheated oven and bake for 50 to 60 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the top center of each loaf. When the toothpick comes out clean, it's done. Note that any pans that have cherries stirred into the batter will probably need to bake a bit longer than pans without cherries.

Banana Bread Options:

1. *For three loaves of plain banana bread: Simply divide the batter evenly between the three prepared pans.
2. *For three loaves with chocolate chips: Scatter slightly less than 1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips across the top of each pan of batter. You could also play around with stirring chocolate chips right into the batter.
3. *For three loaves of banana bread with maraschino cherries: Stir 1 cup of quartered cherries into the batter, and then divide the batter amongst the three pans. Add a bit more quartered cherries over the tops of the batter if you like. Just know that the cherries will start to weigh down the top of the loaf, the more you add - possibly causing the top to sink a bit when baking. Go light on the cherries if you want a plumper looking loaf.
4. *For one loaf of plain banana bread, one loaf with chocolate chips, and one loaf with maraschino cherries: Divide the batter evenly between the three prepared pans. Leave pan #1 as is, this is the plain one. For pan #2, scatter slightly less than 1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips across the top of the batter. For pan #3, stir 1/3 cup of quartered cherries into the batter, and then scatter a few more quartered cherries over the top.
5. *I'll also throw in another variation that we sometimes do. If you like chocolate and cherries together, stir both chocolate chips and quartered cherries into the batter. Or stir just quartered cherries into the batter and then scatter chocolate chips over the top.