if you have been on social media at all during quarantine, you have probably noticed people baking all types of things from muffins to pies to garlic bread to banana bread.  there were plenty of recipes i was interested in trying many of them but realized there were so many recipes that required all types of things i would not typically have in my pantry or refrigerator.  that was when my search began.

 

i searched high and low for the most basic banana bread recipe – both so i would not have to make additional trips to the store for ingredients and so i could share the recipe with my students if it turned out well.

 

it definitely did!

 

 

eating on a dime had so many banana bread/muffin recipes to choose from.  i realized that i had enough ingredients to make two loaves.  however, i chose to bake one loaf at a time so i could taste loaf one (in the event something needed to be tweaked) before baking loaf two.  it turns out that the recipe did not need to be tweaked at all in terms of ingredients but i did adjust the amount of time recommended for baking from the original recipe.  the amount of time recommended was not enough for my particular oven but more on that in a moment.

 

here are the ingredients you need for a single loaf:

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas (i used 3 large ripe bananas)
• 1/3 cup of melted butter
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup of sugar (you can add brown sugar if you prefer – i did not because i was too afraid to risk altering it)
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of flour

 

now, for the directions:

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. spray a 5×9 loaf pan with cooking spray
3. peel and mash the bananas in a large bowl (if they are frozen, be sure to let them thaw first)
4. once the bananas are mashed, add in the melted butter, egg, sugar, vanilla and salt – be sure to stir this well
5. add in the baking soda and flour and stir well (fyi, i simply mixed everything by hand)
6. pour ingredients into coated pan and bake
7. bake for one hour (insert toothpick in the center of the loaf at the 50 minute mark to be see if it comes out clean and go from there – each of my loaves took roughly 72-75 minutes to bake so it is obviously based on your oven)
8. after removing from oven, let cool on rack before removing from pan

 

 

in addition to how easy this was to make, i loved that it was sweet enough to cure a sweet tooth but not overly sweet so if you wanted to have a slice or two with coffee or tea in the morning for breakfast, you absolutely could.  even on day three, this banana bread is the gift that keeps on giving.  it has not dried out one bit!  for those of you who love the sweet and savory combo, slather on a bit of butter and thank me later.

 

if you try out this recipe, please let me know how you like it!

 

xoxo,

k. tap