Banana Bread Recipe
Could there be a better type of bread than banana bread? I have been eating banana bread for as long as I can remember and I can’t remember a single recipe that I didn’t enjoy. Banana bread is very easy to make and it’s also extremely moist and flavorful. It’s also a good way to make use of bananas that you have had sitting around for awhile that are no longer good to eat. For this recipe you want to use bananas that are blackened, the riper the bananas the more flavor the bread will have. Adding pecans or other nuts is a great addition as well as mini chocolate chips if you like. No mixer is required for this recipe because the mixing will be done with your hands. Mixing with your hands seems to give the bread better mixture but you can also mix with a mixer or even better gently with a plastic spoon. This recipe will make 1-2 loafs. If you want a bigger loaf just make 1 or make 2 for a couple smaller loafs. The baking time will differ depending on how moist you like your bread. If you want your banana bread to be moist don’t bake it until a toothpick comes out clean but just until it comes out almost clean.
Ingredients:
¾ cup butter (softened)
1 ½ cups sugar
3 bananas (blackened)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
¾ teaspoon salt
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup nuts (chopped)
Cooking Instructions:
Step 1: Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees, and In a mixing bowl cream butter and sugar. Mash bananas by hand and add to mixture. Add in eggs, vanilla extract, baking soda, flour and salt. Stir in buttermilk and chopped nuts.
Step 2: Pour mixture into 1 or 2 greased loaf pans.
Step 3: Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes (or until a toothpick comes out clean or almost clean).
Is there a way to print your recipes without the pictures? I have bookmarked several recipes that I want to try, but I can’t afford to use so much printer ink for the pictures. By the way, those pictures are very nice, I refer to them while reading the full recipe!! I hand copied the sweet and sour chicken recipe, but I have arthritis, and it was difficult. This banana bread recipe is very interesting! I know we’ll enjoy it!
Thanks for your help!
Maggie – Thanks for the compliments on my photos. To print just the text, I would recommend highlighting all of the text with your curser and then right clicking and going to copy. Then paste it into notepad or wordpad or any word program and printing it from there. If the pictures show up in your word program just click on them and press delete. I will also try and find a plugin that will allow printing without pictures to put on here. If you need anymore help please feel free to contact me. Thanks.
Bobby I love banana bread and yours looks so moist and delicious. The only problem I have is that my children like bananas and so they never get to ripe.
Just today I was thinking of making banana bread and got this wonderful recipe…am going to make is very soon…will let u know the result
I love banana bread. I also add coconut and maraschino cherries! Delish!
I love banana bread and this looks great! I actually never use butter in mine. I bet this is super moist.
bobby! definitely cannot resist banana bread and yours looks like the ultimate loaf. so dark and moist. i love having walnuts in them and even though chocolate and banana are highly raved about, i really like my banana bread in neat slices with loads of butter and gd cuppa tea.
Ivy – Thanks, sounds like you might wanna stash some bananas away somewhere
Priti – Sounds good, I hope you enjoy the recipe.
HoneyB – Coconut and cherries sound amazing in banana bread!
jillian – It came out extremely moist. I think I will go have another piece right now
diva – Thanks, I put pecans in this one but I had actually wanted walnuts but they appeared to be out at the store
Bobby, I so echo the earlier comments – this just looks so moist & delicios, great photos too!
Your banana bread looks so moist. I have some bananas that definitely need to be made into banana bread! Thanks for the recipe.
I don know why, but i am really finding it yummy through its pictures….
I haven’t really liked bananas until recently. We usually have bananas around the house for the kids to snack on and sometimes when they get more ripe Annie starts talking about making banana bread. But either the kids eat all the bananas or the bananas just get too gross and we end up tossing them in the compost pile.
Banana bread was a huge part of my childhood, my mom always used to make it for us. The pictures you posted of the banana bread looks just like my mom’s. mmm..
I love how everything else looks too, got me hungry. I’m going to try out the zucchini bread this week. There’s a bumper crop of zucchini in our little town.
Hi Bobby I posted about your fish today and I also left you the I Love You This Much award!
Looks delicious.. I love banana.. Banana can help you with your memory..
Banana bread my mom always used to make it for us. Definitely cannot resist banana bread looks very moist. I love having chocolate chips in my banana bread. Banana bread in heated slices with loads of butter mmm good.
this looks like the kind of banana bread that I love. I’ll be trying this soon for sure.
Hi Bobby,
I’m a newbie in the kitchen, and this question might sound silly, but I just want to make sure that ‘cream the butter and sugar’ actually means that you beat them with electric mixer? And after that do you keep beating with the mixer until the addition of salt?
Thanks!
Ika – Good question, thanks for asking. You can cream the butter and sugar by using an electic mixer on medium speed. After that you can use a beater but I would recommend using a spoon and mixing slowly but you can use an electric mixer if desired all the way until the end. I hope this helps and I hope you enjoy the recipe. Thanks.
liked the bread…the first time i made it, i thought it was a smidgen dry so the second time i made it, i added 1/2 cup of sour cream. SERIOUSLY, the best banana bread ever, so moist and tasty. Everyone i know has been begging for me to make it for them.
I experimented with baking in a glass bread pan for the first time, and it seemed to not cook so well as far as evenly distributing the heat. Aluminum pans (not the flimsy disposable ones) are best. Also I cooked this bread for an extra 15 min. (perhaps my apt was cold), because when I tested it with a wood stick after the suggested 1 hr., it came out wet. This might have caused the outer part of the bread to be too brown and dry. Next time, if I have to cook it longer, I will see if I can get away with adding only 10 extra min. The suggestion from blogger “gina” to add 1/2 cup sour cream may help solve some of my problems too.
Unlike the pumpkin bread, after the bread cools, you have to cover the banana bread and let it sit for several hours to reabsorb the moisture. I thought this would make two medium size loaves, but it really only makes 1 large loaf. I think she meant you can make 1 large loaf or 2 – 3 mini-loaves (there are mini-loaf size pans, although probably hard to find).
The greatest feature of blogchef’s recipes posted is they are no-fail in taste. Even if it does not come out perfectly for beginner cooks like me, the taste is still delicious!
My second attempt yielded better results. I thawed frozen banana puree from 5 blackened bananas left over from last week, enough to make 2 loaves. This time, I sifted the flour (unbleached always better than bleached), baking soda, and salt together before adding to the mixture. I added the 1/2 cup sour cream per loaf (in my case, I doubled the recipe for 2 loaves) along with the buttermilk as suggested by blogger “gina”. Aluminum bread pans were used this time, and the 2 banana breads were cooked together for 1 h 25 min. total.
This was the tastiest, super moist banana bread! I am not crazy about walnuts and used the chopped pecans as Bobby suggested. Thanks Bobby, and blogger Gina for sharing the recipe ideas.
bannana bread is the best!
Hi Bobby,
This is a wonderful banana bread! I used half whole wheat flour / half white flour, 1/2 cup of butter/canola spread and 1/4 grape seed oil and 1/2 cup of pecans. Since I had no buttermilk I used regular milk with enough lemon juice to make it curdle. Had no loaf pans, so baked it in a tube cake pan. It turned out great and was delicious. So happy I could find my way back here because I lost this recipe. Now I’ll have you in my favorites.
I made this recipe today with all my left over bananas… Its so delicious and moist. I had no nuts in the cubboard so put a mix of crushed chocolate biscuits instead and it is so yummy!!! its almost all eaten already. Thanks
I make this recipe all the time, everyone loves it! I omit the nuts for my husband but use pecans for my loaf.
Thanks for posting!
Hi, I’m back with another general tip, which I came across as I was making this delicious banana bread again. For the past couple of months, on the internet, I casually read “how to make butter” from heavy cream. One of the byproducts in buttermilk. Well, this recipe calls for buttermilk, so I decided to scratch this itch and try my hand at making homemade butter and buttermilk. You can read all about my excursion which I posted on cookingforengineers blog (see comments) which had good instructions:
http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article/113/Making-Butter
It took a bit of trial and error, but I ultimately succeeded with both homemade butter and buttermilk as my reward. I decided to use both the homemade butter (already softened) and buttermilk for this recipe and everything turned out wonderfully. One quart of heavy cream yields about 2 cups butter and 2 cups buttermilk, more than enough to double this recipe for 2 loaves of banana bread.
From this point on, I plan to make my own homemade butter and buttermilk every time your recipe calls for these ingredients! The possibilities for homemade butter are endless, including herb butters, etc.
Sorry, I meant to say, one of the byproducts of making butter from heavy cream is buttermilk, not “in” buttermilk.
Perfect recipe. I leave out the nuts but I’ve used this recipe about twenty times and it has never failed me. Thank you!
How many tablespoons is 3/4 cup of butter?
Nikki – about 12
Hi Bobby,
I just read all of the messages before writing this comment. I made the bread for the second time today, and it was perfect! I am freezing one loaf for my Thanksgiving company. Thank you so much for setting things up so I can print out your recipes! We have so enjoyed each recipe that I have tried! I wish you and your family a very happy Thanksgiving!
Maggie- happy thanksgiving to you and your family as well. I am glad you enjoyed the recipe.
I tried this a bit back and it came out quite yummy! The ‘crust’ part was just crispy enough and the inside was nice and moist. Very good!
Hi Bobby,
I just made two loafs today in the aluminum foil pans. I took them out after a hour exactly after checking with toothpick came out clean. I noticed however the top was very dark? Do you think I have the racks up to high and that could have been the problem. The bananas I used were extremely moist and I remember you mentioning that it can vary in time because of that.
I haven’t tried it yet but the kitchen smells awesome!
Hey it’s Kent’s girlfriend =), I was wondering if when you say blackened you mean the bananas need to be completely black on the peel, or just some black spots. Thanks.
Kent girlfriend – Either will work, you just want to bananas to be very ripe.