This banana bread recipe is very straightforward and easy. The only thing that might might be a little strange is the buttermilk; most people don’t tend to have that on hand and don’t really want to but a whole container for just a 1/2 cup in a recipe. The alternative is to make the banana bread with sour milk. Not hard, you just add a tablespoon of vinegar to your measuring cup, then fill the rest of the way with milk and let it curdle for a few minutes. But more on the sour milk in a minute!
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I do read your comments, dear readers! The wonderful part about this recipe is that it’s flexible. Add some cinnamon, a handful of cranberries (my mother loves to do this), chocolate chips, or whatever else excites you. You can actually split this into two smaller loaves if you like; I just think it’s best baked in one giant loaf. We’ve made it in cake pans and as muffins and mini muffins, too. Go crazy! But be sure to adjust the baking time if you change the pan size.
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Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour10 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour20 minutes
Amazingly moist and full of flavor banana bread! There is a way around buying a whole quart of buttermilk for one use in this recipe. Pour a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into a measuring cup then fill up to the half-cup mark before starting the recipe. The vinegar sours the milk, and is a great substitution for buttermilk.
Ingredients
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste (buy it here)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer; add eggs and mix well. Add sour milk (or buttermilk), vanilla and bananas to mixture. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and blend well. Bake in 1 loaf pan (I like this one!) for 70 minutes.
Adjust your time down if you're baking in small pans. The smaller the pan, the shorter the cook time. Muffins in this recipe take about 25 minutes. I suggest checking your bread every 5 minutes after 25 minutes to see if a toothpick comes out clean if you aren't using a standard loaf pan. Once the toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, the bread is done!
After you’ve got your bread baked and cooled, it’s time to decorate them up for gift-giving! See how I used some cellophane bags and stamps to make perfect little gifts below!
If you love this banana bread, my ZUCCHINI BREAD (click here)is another must-try!
There are so many different loaf pan varieties out there; and lots with pretty print on the sides for whatever holiday you’re gift giving at! You’ll just want to bake your bread in a container the recipient doesn’t feel like they have to return. I made that mistake once–sending little mini loaves out into the world in pretty little porcelain loaf pans. Every one of them came back!
I like to slip the loaf pans into a cellophane bag and add a little tag to them. With a pretty loaf pan, the decorating the gift part is easy!
For my tag, I really just had a lot of fun going through my box of scrapbook punches. You don’t have to take all these steps; leaving out one or two details won’t deter from your pretty package!
Cut two 1×4 pieces of cardstock. Punch one edge with an edge puncher; punch the other with a hole puncher. Punch or cut a heart out of your choice of colors of cardstock, and punch a hole near the middle of the heart.
Layer the two 1×4 pieces of stock on top of each other and add the heart, lining up all the holes. String through with baker’s twine.
Use your Expressionery.com stamp to put your name on the 1×4 paper, then tie around the neck of your cello bag. It’s the perfect little decoration for a loving little gift!
Don’t forget to pin the banana bread recipe for later!
Thank you toExpressionery.com for sponsoring this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own, and I adore the high quality of their products!
As the bananas ripen, the fruit converts starches to sugars, making them sweeter and more flavorful. If you've ever had a slice of banana bread that barely tastes of banana, it's probably because the bananas used weren't quite ripe enough.
The tldr; is that she needed 6 very ripe bananas to work on this recipe, but as you know you can not just buy overly ripe bananas at the store, so she went to Twitter and called on her followers.
Bananas vary in size and this impacts their moisture content. 3 large bananas have more moisture than 3 small/medium-sized bananas. Excess moisture (when compared to the recipe's dry ingredients) means a greater potential for banana bread to sink in the middle.
As it sits at room temperature, starches convert to sugars, making the fruit sweeter and softer. These brown spots, often seen as a sign of spoilage, are actually a dead giveaway of peak banana bread potential. But, there is a limit. Black bananas or rotten bananas are a no-go.
Its mind boggling, but rising agents like baking powder and baking soda do NOT make baked goods rise. They simple create the bubbles for steam to expand and grow in the baked good. Therefore, adding more rising agents like baking powder and baking soda will NOT enable greater rise.
If you use too much flour, you'll end up with really dry banana bread, and If you don't use enough flour, your banana bread will be way too wet. The secret lies in how you measure the flour. The scoop out of the bag method could be packing way too much flour.
Eating too many bananas or other high-potassium foods can cause excess potassium in the body, also called hyperkalemia. This can cause serious health problems, including heart issues. While most people wouldn't be able to stomach the number of bananas necessary to cause this to happen, it's something to be mindful of.
I have found that about ¾ – 1 cup of ½ inch slices of banana equal close to 1 large banana. After freezing the slices, do a quick measure to see how many cups 1 banana equals for easier measurement for recipes.
Banana bread recipes typically ask you to use overripe bananas so that they're easier to mush. This means it's tempting to toss all your bananas into the mix when you're ready to bake, to avoid food waste. But if you add too much of the fruit into your batter, your bread could turn out mushy, heavy, and wet.
If your banana bread doesn't taste like bananas, it could be that you didn't use bananas that were ripe enough. The flavour of a ripe banana is quite different than a green banana. Choose the ripest bananas possible. Some bakers recommend using bananas that are on the verge of over-ripe with completely black peels.
You may be baking at too high a temperature. Home ovens are often not accurate. Try lowering the temperature by 25°F, and bake for a slightly longer time. If you are using a dark colored pan like many non-stick pans it will cause the outside to brown more quickly while the inside stays raw.
Let the bananas ripen (and overripen) at room temperature. Depending on the weather, this could take a few days, or up to a week. The best bananas for banana bread aren't yellow; they're black. Or they're at least streaked with black/brown, with just the barest hint of green at the stem.
The reason bananas get sweeter as they ripen is that their starch is broken down into sugar. When your body has to break down the starch itself (as it does when you eat a green banana), your blood sugar rises more slowly.
To immediately ripen bananas for use in banana breads, cakes, and muffins, you can use the oven. The texture of a baked banana may be a bit softer than that of one naturally ripened but the taste and caramelized sweetness will be amazing.
Introduction: My name is Corie Satterfield, I am a fancy, perfect, spotless, quaint, fantastic, funny, lucky person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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