My Dream Banana Bread

Banana and vanilla forward, with oomph from salted butter, sour cream, and kosher salt to really season it through. Equally important, it does not use a mixer.

This Banana Bread is my dream recipe. It’s banana and vanilla forward. It gets extra oomph from grass-fed salted butter, sour cream or yogurt, and a generous amount of kosher salt to really season it without being salty. It’s tender, rich, just sweet enough, and not-too-heavy. Add chocolate chips, warm baking spices, or brown the butter if you want to. But the point of this recipe is that you don’t *need* to do any of that. 

Equally important, this recipe does not use a mixer. When I want banana bread I want lazy baking. I don’t want to plug anything in. I want to grab things from my pantry, mix by hand, pop it in the oven, and then I want my house to smell like a bakery. And then I want the banana bread to taste like it came from a bakery. So here we are!

This recipe works with bananas at any stage of ripeness. Overripe, soft, totally brown and speckled bananas will do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of the flavor here. But we don’t always have ‘em on hand which is why I developed this to also work with bananas that maybe aren’t quite there yet. Just promise me you won’t use something green. I’m sharing a few products and baking tips below before you get into the kitchen:

A few tips + product recs:

• I love USA Pans for baking. If I’m baking a loaf I’m using their 9x5 loaf pan.

• I splurge on Neilsen-Massey vanilla, highly recommend.

• I use a whole milk sour cream (love anything from Good Culture), or a whole milk Greek yogurt, usually Straus.

• I use salted butter in this recipe for added flavor. I use grass-fed, like Kerrygold, which gives it a rich, rounded-out flavor.

• The recipe calls to bake this until a toothpick or a fork comes out clean. If you prefer, you can under-bake it a bit and pull it when you only get a few small and moist crumbs on a toothpick instead. It’ll finish setting as it cools.

Now let’s get into it!

My Dream Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup (AKA 4 tablespoons) grass-fed, salted butter

• 4 bananas

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 1 egg

• ¼ cup sour cream or Greek yogurt

• ¼ cup brown sugar

• ¼ cup granulated sugar

• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

• 1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• Cooking spray, I like avocado spray

Instructions:

Melt the butter + mash the banana vanilla mixture

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Melt the butter and let cool.

3. While the butter cools, in a large bowl, mash bananas with fork. Add vanilla extract, mix with wooden spoon or spatula. Set aside, and start gathering the rest of the ingredients -  the bananas will absorb the vanilla flavor as they sit.

Prep the flour mixture

1. In separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and kosher salt. Set aside.

Fold remaining ingredients into banana mixture

1. To mashed banana mixture, add egg, greek yogurt or sour cream, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and melted and cooled butter. Whisk until combined. It’s okay if there are some lumps of bananas. You don’t want to overmix here, but if you see lumps of brown sugar, be sure to break them up and whisk to combine.

2. Gradually whisk the dry ingredients into the banana mixture until combined.

Bake, cool, enjoy

1. Spray a 9x5 inch loaf pan with cooking spray. Pour banana mixture into greased loaf pan and bake for 60-70 minutes, or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 

2. Remove loaf pan from oven and let banana bread sit in loaf pan for 10-15 minutes before carefully transferring it onto a wire cooling rack. For best results, let it cool completely if you can handle it! *It can take a solid hour or more to cool. If you can’t wait that long, you’ll at least want to wait 30 minutes to allow it to set. It’ll taste best when it’s been cooling for at least 2 hours.*

3. Slice and enjoy.