How to make moist yummy banana bread-A tutorial!

You’ve seen the recipe before on my blog-in zucchini bread form, but here’s a tutorial on how to make rockin’ banana bread. I’ve tried a thousand recipes for banana bread and I keep coming back to this one as the best.

The secret to great banana bread is really ripe bananas, a good solid sweet bread recipe (our grandmas might’ve called it batter bread), and plenty of spices to kick it up a notch-as our dear friend, Emeril would say!

This recipe fits the bill, and I promise you that you don’t need to be the Next Food Network Star or a contestant on Top Chef in order to make this dish transform you into a rock star in the kitchen.

Well, enough of all this blabbin’, let’s get to cooking.

We’ll start with a quick tip for ripening bananas quickly:

If you buy your bananas at the store and they are still green, but you’d like to make banana bread tomorrow, you’ll need to grab a paper bag (like from the grocery store), a bunch of bananas, an apple or a tomato (optional, but speeds the process up considerably), and a little bit of time.

Put the bunch of bananas in the bottom of the paper bag along with an apple or tomato, and seal the paper bag. Open every 12-24 hours to check, then re-close your bag until the bananas are the desired ripeness. They will brown much faster than if you seperated them on the counter. There’s a chemical that the apple puts off that helps ripen the bananas. Do NOT refrigerate the bananas-ever-b/c once you do, you’ve lost the ability for the banana to ever get past the ripeness it was at when you put it in the fridge, and you’ll never get banana bread-quality bananas out of them!

Next, let’s gather our ingredients:

3 eggs

1 c. oil

1 Tbl. vanilla

2 1/4 c. sugar

2 c. mashed bananas (4-6, and don’t forget to mash them before you measure!)

1/2 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. baking soda

3 c. flour

3/4 tsp. salt

1 Tbl. cinnamon (yes, this is a LOT of cinnamon, but it’s what makes this recipe great, so don’t skimp on it!)

Next, we mash the bananas. Ripe bananas are not only more flavorful in banana bread, but they also are easier to mash! Break them up into a small bowl or large measuring container, using a fork or potato masher to mash them to a liquidy pulp.

Beat eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla.

Add mashed bananas. Batter will be thin.

Add dry ingredients, mix well. (Please note that my bananas sat on the counter for a bit after mashing, and therefore were a little browner than they might typically be, which may’ve affected the color of the batter at this stage.

Grease and flour pan, pour batter into pans-batter will still be pretty thin, much thinner than most banana bread recipes, so don’t panic. Also, please note that in these pictures I used my silicone baking pans, so I only sprayed them with cooking oil spray instead of greasing and flouring the pan, but if going with a traditional metal or glass pan, you’re going to want to grease and flour the pan as per the directions. There’s a really cool “grease and flour” spray out there nowadays that makes this so easy:

But if you don’t have access to this luxury time saver, you could always do it the old fashioned way.

The batter in the pans, before going into the oven.

Bake 1 hr. at 325. Makes 1 bundt or 2 regular loaves. Remove from pan right away. Do Not Overcook! You can optionally add 1 cup of nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruits, whatever you’d like really, but we like it plain. Whenever I’m making it for a crowd, I’m sure to avoid putting nuts into it b/c of all the people with nut allergies. If I do use nuts, I avoid walnuts at all costs, b/c I believe that walnuts dry out a batter worse than anything I’ve ever seen, so I go with chopped pecans. It’s whatever makes you and your family and friends happy that matters, so go with what sounds good!

And there’s one of my beautiful banana bread loaves, see how easy that was?