Toss-the-Other-Recipes Banana Bread

This delicious banana bread, adapted from a Bon Appetit recipe, can be frozen for easy breakfasts and snacks.

There are just a few baked things that you can almost always find in our freezer, much to my children’s chagrin. One of them is banana bread. And that makes everyone very happy.

We have been through so many iterations of a banana bread recipe for so many years. We’ve tried it with applesauce (in an attempt to make it healthier). We’ve tried it with yogurt. We’ve tried more eggs, less eggs, buckwheat, oat bran. White flour, wheat flour. Trust me when I tell you we have tried all the recipes. And just last year we found the one we are sticking with.

The one we love is a slightly adapted version of Bon Appetit’s “Buckwheat Banana Cake with Yogurt-Espresso Frosting.” Don’t go anywhere, though! We eliminate all those wrong words: buckwheat, cake, espresso. Banana bread is banana bread. This is not a cake. It does not need frosting. And it most certainly does not need espresso.

This is the banana bread that I buy bananas for, just so that they can go almost bad, so that I can make the bread and have it in the house for my girls when they come home. All they do is open the front door and take a whiff inside the house, and bad moods dissipate. You might try it if you’re wanting teenagers or other people in your house to smile and say, “Thank you.”

Toss-the-Other-Recipes Banana Bread

Ingredients: 

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
4 super ripe bananas
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
½ cup olive oil
½ sour cream
Optional: ½ cup milk chocolate chips, tossed in a tablespoon of flour

Recipe directions: 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8 ½” x 4 ½” loaf pan with nonstick spray, then line it with parchment, letting the paper hang over on both long sides of the pan. 

Whisk the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda and baking powder in a medium bowl. In another bowl, mash the bananas and brown sugar with a fork or potato masher, until the brown sugar has dissolved and the whole thing is a gooey mess. Mix in the eggs, oil and sour cream. Add the dry ingredients, including the chocolate chips if you are using them, and mix with a spatula just until everything is incorporated. Pour the batter into the pan, then smooth the top. Bake the banana bread for about 55 minutes to 1 hour, until the top browns a bit and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. (We have been known to under-bake the bread just slightly, so that it stays a little softer and less “bready” on the inside.)

Let the banana bread cool before slicing. I like to make the slices about ¾” thick, then stack them between layers of parchment paper in a big, lidded plastic container that I pop in the freezer for easy breakfasts and snacks.