Description
This foolproof banana bread recipe creates incredibly moist, tender loaves bursting with sweet banana flavor. Using simple pantry ingredients and overripe bananas, it’s the perfect comfort food for breakfast, snacking, or sharing.
Ingredients
For the Banana Bread:
- 3 big overripe bananas (the mushier the better – trust me)
- 1/3 cup melted butter (I sometimes use oil if I’m out of butter)
- 3/4 cup sugar (I use a little less because my kids don’t need more sugar)
- 1 egg, beaten up (leave it out for a bit so it’s not cold)
- 1 tsp vanilla (the real stuff, not imitation)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- A pinch of salt (don’t skip – my biggest mistake for years)
- 1 1/2 cups regular flour
- 1/2 cup walnuts or chocolate chips if you want them
Instructions
Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease your loaf pan with butter or that cooking spray stuff. Line it with parchment paper – this step used to seem pointless to me until I had to chisel bread out of a pan once.
Dump those bananas in your big bowl and mash them up with a fork. Don’t worry about making them perfect – some lumps are good. The uglier your bananas look, the better this bread will taste.
Stir the melted butter into your mashed bananas. Add the sugar, that beaten egg, and vanilla. Mix it all up until it looks combined and a little bubbly.
Pro Tip: If your bananas are really liquidy and gross-looking, that’s actually perfect. The bread will be super moist.
Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over everything, then dump in the flour. Mix just until you can’t see flour anymore. Don’t go crazy mixing – I used to do this and ended up with tough bread.
Pour everything into your pan and smooth the top a little. Stick it in the oven for about an hour. It’s done when you poke a toothpick in the middle and it comes out with just a few wet bits.
Let it sit in the pan for ten minutes, then flip it out onto a rack. Wait at least thirty minutes before cutting – I know it sucks waiting, but hot bread falls apart into a mess.
Notes
Your bananas need to look gross. I’m talking black spots everywhere and squishy to touch. If they still look good, they won’t taste right in the bread. Need to speed things up? Stick them in the oven at 300 degrees for twenty minutes. The skins turn black but who cares.
Put salt in there even though it’s dessert. I skip this sometimes and always regret it. For bread that stays soft forever, use half butter and half sour cream. Got this tip from my neighbor after I complained my bread got stale fast.
Don’t open the oven door to peek for at least forty-five minutes. I know you want to look but resist. Last time I did this the middle collapsed and looked like a sad crater.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 hour
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 slice
- Calories: 245
- Sugar: 18g
- Sodium: 180mg
- Fat: 6g
- Saturated Fat: 4g
- Unsaturated Fat: 2g
- Trans Fat: 0g
- Carbohydrates: 45g
- Fiber: 2g
- Protein: 4g
- Cholesterol: 35mg