The Best Banana Bread – Easy and Simple!

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I read somewhere that if you want to make someone’s day, just bake them banana bread – and this is so true! At least here at home, when I say I’m baking banana bread, I always receive a “Finally!!” as an answer, while I watch my sambo jump for joy (sometimes literally jump!) as if something absolutely fantastic had just happened.

Banana bread is indeed fantastic! It is so simple and yet so delicious. It is a classic, everyone’s favorite, comfort food, especially in the US. This is the type of food that the only reason one stops eating is because there is nothing left to eat.

Banana bread should be fluffy, moist, and with a wonderful and rich banana flavor! I personally think that banana goes really well with cinnamon, it adds a warm and cozy touch to the dish. But if you are not a big fan of cinnamon, you can simply not add it, the banana bread will still taste great.

The recipe I am sharing here is a very simple and basic one (yet absolutely delicious!), but one of the great things about banana bread is that you can customize it as you want. After all, banana goes well with so many other ingredients – peanut butter, chocolate chips, pecans, raisins, coconut flakes, walnuts…and the list goes on and on.

I like to know about the origin of things and recipes – How did people come up with this combination? What was the context? So, I decided to see if there was a story behind the creation of the banana bread recipe and here is what I found:

A Little bit of History

During America’s Great Depression after the US economy crash in 1929, Americans faced food scarcity, and emergency food programs were set up to prevent starvation. Recipes that helped with stretching ingredients out and cheap ingredients became very in demand. In this context, loaves became very popular. Recipes for different kinds of loaves and quick breads made without yeast started to appear, as these required less time to rise. It was also the beginning of baking powder/baking soda mass production, making chemical leaveners widely available nationwide.

One version of the banana bread recipe development is that thrifty housewives were looking for a way to use overripe bananas to avoid food waste. The combination of the desire, or necessity, to not waste overripe bananas, and the availability of baking powder were used as inspiration for the banana “quick” bread recipe idea.

Banana bread has currently several different recipe variations and it is so loved that it even has a national day in the US – February 23.

Back to the Recipe

Banana Bread Recipe Ingredients:

A little bit about the ingredients I used for this recipe:

Bananas: The bananas should be ripe. You know when they are soft, with a darker yellow color, full of brown or black spots, and with a thinner peel? That is when they are ready to be transformed into banana bread. If they are not ready, putting them for 15 minutes in the oven, as further explained in the recipe instructions, will do the trick.

Oil: I found the best results when using oil for this recipe. I used rapeseed, but you can choose a vegetable oil of your preference. If you prefer to use butter instead of oil, it will be easier to work with room temperature or even melted butter. Just make sure the butter is not too hot, because we do not want the eggs to cook when adding them to the mixture!

Brown sugar: It will help with the color and taste. Brown sugar has a different taste from regular sugar (less sweet in my opinion) and will give a light caramel color to the bread.

Sugar (regular sugar): No need to add much since we have the sweetness of the banana and the brown sugar in the recipe.

Eggs: I used 2 big eggs. The eggs will help with the fluffiness.

Flour: For this recipe, I used all-purpose flour.

Cinnamon: It goes really well with banana. You can add more or less, depending on your taste.

Vanilla aroma/extract:  It enhances the cinnamon’s warming flavor.

How to make Banana Bread

This is a very simple recipe, here is how you make it:

First, preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Peel and mash the bananas in a bowl with a fork. If the bananas are not ripe, put them in the oven for 15 minutes.

Next, add in a bowl flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon and whisk the ingredients until well mixed. I will call this “dry mixture”.

Then in another bowl, add the sugars and the oil and whisk them well. Add the eggs and vanilla and again whisk the ingredients well until nicely combined. You want it to be as uniform as possible. I will call this “liquid mixture”.

After that, you want to pour the “liquid mixture” into the “dry mixture” and mix them. Add the bananas and whisk everything together until you obtain a nice uniform mixture.

Pour the batter into a loaf pan covered with a baking sheet, cut the banana into 3 vertical slices for decoration, and put them on top of the batter. You don’t have to cut them in this specific way, it is the decoration part, so you can do it as you prefer.

Put it in the center of the oven and bake it for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick or fork comes out dry. But watch it carefully, because the temperature can change from oven to oven, and you do not want your cake to burn!

Tips and Tricks:

Here are some tips that might be helpful:

Mixture: Careful to not overmix, to avoid a dense loaf.

Baking: Be careful to not overbake, but also make sure to not underbake! Sometimes it might look ready, but it is not. Always check if it is ready with a toothpick in the highest part of the cake (usually the center). Every oven is different, so make sure you keep an eye on the banana bread.

You might also like these recipes:

• • Homemade Double Chocolate Almond Granola

• • Homemade Almond Milk

• • Homemade Peanut Butter