From Scratch to Scrumptious

When I was young, Grandma showed her love through baking. She sent over so many loaves of banana bread that it’s a staple of my childhood memories. We all loved it.

I’ve tried many recipes over the years to find one that was as moist and delicious as hers. I’ve tried banana breads made with sour cream, with butter, and on and on.

This recipe is the best one. Comparatively lower in sugar than many banana breads out there, yet somehow still winning for best flavor! Gooey on top and moist throughout. What more could you want from a banana bread?

This has become one of my favorite easy breakfasts! Because my family can eat almost a whole loaf in one morning, I always double the recipe and freeze the extra loaf. It comes out of the freezer even gooier than before!

If you’re not feeding a crowd, you can make a single loaf, slice it up and freeze the leftovers. At breakfast time, simply pull off a couple of slices for a quick and easy breakfast.

Get ready for easy mornings! Keep a loaf of Classic Banana Bread in your freezer!

Sugar: This recipe uses granulated white sugar.

Bananas: 3 large bananas is about 1 1/2 cups mashed. It doesn’t have to be exact, but a measurement lets you know how close you are. When I use smaller bananas, it’s less gooey and a bit more bready (is that a word?), but still yummy. Sometimes I’ll use 3 small bananas and throw in an extra half of banana to make up for it. If your bananas are ridiculously large, that’s also fine. Your bread will be gooier. Both ways, you’ll get a delicious loaf!

Vegetable oil: I prefer using oil in a quick bread since it results in a more moist loaf. In this recipe, the banana is the main flavor, so you don’t need butter vying for the flavor spotlight. Go for vegetable oil to give you a soft, moist bread.

Eggs: Any egg size medium or larger will be fine.

Flour: This recipe uses all-purpose flour. No need for fancy flours here.

Baking soda and baking powder: Levening agents to help your bread rise up.

Vanilla and salt: Flavoring to round out and compliment the banana flavor.

Best Way to Mash Bananas

There are a few ways to mash bananas that I’m familiar with. They all work perfectly fine; the end result is the same. Pick the one that works best for you.

Whichever way you choose, I recommend breaking your banana up into thirds (or more if you want) to give the process a head start.

Manual mashing

Put your banana pieces in a wide bowl and mash them up with a fork or a potato masher. This way would probably be fun for the kids to do, if not a little messy. If you want an extra work out, go for this one.

Bag it up

Put your banana pieces in a gallon-sized baggie. Make sure that it’s sealed tightly! Squeeze those bananas till smooth. When you’re done, cut the corner off of the bottom of the bag and squeeze the bananas out like you’re piping frosting!

This way ensures the smoothest banana puree since no large pieces can fit through your cut hole. Any pieces will have to be squeezed again until they’re small enough to go through. This way is lots of fun for kids, and the mess is contained in the bag. If you make banana bread frequently, you may find that this gets a bit wasteful for how many bags you go through. However, if this is both an activity and a breakfast, it may be worth it for you!

Mix it up

Put your banana pieces directly into the bowl of your mixer. Set it to medium speed and walk away! Check for remaining pieces of banana before moving on with the rest of the recipe. If you don’t get a thorough mashing, you may end up with chunks of banana in the final bread. I’ve had this happen before, and it was fine. It won’t ruin your bread.

This has become my favorite mashing method. I can be feeling lazy and still get the work done easily. It minimizes mess since I use the bowl of the mixer for the rest of the recipe. Plus, I don’t have to keep buying baggies every time I make banana bread.