I am a fairly good cook, but my sister is the baker in my family. I’ve tried to replicate her banana bread so many times and have failed. She’s allowed me the honor of sharing her recipe with you – we hope you enjoy it! This bread is spicy and reminds me almost of a soft gingerbread. It’s so delicious and perfect for using up leftover bananas.
Quick breads are essentially what their name states: quick. You don’t have to wait around for a long rise time like with yeast style breads, not so you need to knead the dough. In fact, the more you mix together quick bread batter the denser it ends up being. If you want a nice airy loaf you will want to make sure you don’t over mix the dry ingredients after adding to the wet mixture.
I get so impatient during the baking process because banana bread just smells so good. I’ve found my daughter with her face pressed against the oven a couple times while it’s baking and I’m sure I did the same when I was little. If you pull the bread prematurely out of the oven the center will not be fully baked and will fall. It’s okay if the fully baked bread does fall a little bit – but it shouldn’t sink down into a crevice. After cooling on the baking rack you can slice your loaf and enjoy. We prefer our bread with freshly churned butter or a small smear of peanut butter.
Ingredients:
- 5-6 medium sized ripe bananas
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup of applesauce
- 2 large eggs (room temperature)
- 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract
- 3 cups of flour
- 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
- 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1 teaspoon of nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
Method:
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Grease two bread loaf pans and set aside.
- Cream together bananas, sugar, applesauce, eggs and vanilla extract until well mixed throughout.
- In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
- Very carefully add dry ingredients to wet mixture until just mixed – be careful to not over stir.
- Divide batter between the two loaf pans and place in oven to bake for approximately an hour (bread should be cracked along the top and a knife should come out clean).
- Allow bread to cook for 15 minutes before transferring to cooling racks.