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My dad loves banana bread, but honestly I was never much of a fan until this loaf of “Use-It-Up” banana bread.
It’s sweet, moist, and flavorful, with spices that help accentuate its banana flavor.
This is a combination-adaptation of Bread Dad’s two-banana bread recipe and the old family banana bread recipe, which hails from parts unknown. (Though there’s a pretty good chance it comes from the back of a box — turns out a lot of our “old family recipes” secretly do!)
It’s called “use-it-up” banana bread because it’s flexible — only have two small bananas and one egg, like I did the first time I made it? No problem. Got a bunch of nuts in the pantry on the verge of going off? Throw them in! Want it vegan? Easy to do.
Use what you’ve got, and dump in whatever needs to be used up. I promise it’ll be delicious.
Items Needed
- A 9×5 loaf baking pan
- Something to mash the bananas with — you could use a potato masher or something fancy, but a fork will do fine too
- A sifter or fine mesh strainer
- Baking basics: an oven, a wire rack, and oven mitts or potholders
Ingredients
- 2-3 overripe bananas
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs or egg substitutes — I most recently used one egg and ¼ c applesauce, because that’s all I had on hand!
- ½ cup softened unsalted butter or margarine — my family recipe uses Crisco, but I usually use butter
- Up to ½ cup milk or plant milk — more bananas = use less milk. If you have two medium bananas, use ½ cup; three large, don’t use any; something in between, use ¼ or ⅓.
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
- ½ tsp. cinnamon
- ¼ tsp. nutmeg
- ¼ tsp. cloves
Optional: mix-ins of whatever you have — chocolate chips, fresh or dried-then-soaked fruit, nuts, and so on. Add as much as 1 ½ cups if you’d like; just add more milk as needed to keep the consistency cake batter-like and be sure not to fill the loaf pan more than about ⅔ full or it’ll risk spilling over!
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325; grease and flour a 9×5 loaf baking pan.
- Mash bananas and add sugars; let stand for 15 minutes.
- Add butter and eggs to bananas; mash together until butter is mostly fleck-sized (about the size of a peppercorn) or smaller. Add milk and vanilla extract.
- In separate large bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Add banana mixture to dry ingredients and stir until just combined.
- Pour into loaf pan and bake 50-60 minutes or until done. Let cool on wire rack for ten minutes, then remove and let cool completely.
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