When Life Makes You Forget About Your Bananas, Make Banana Bread

Are your bananas sad, droopy, soft and unappealing? We tested and rated some banana bread recipes to recommend a good use of those mushy things. 

When the bananas you bought for the banana split you were going to make your sweetheart go bad or you want to impress the baddie of your dreams, don’t stress — make banana bread. There’s nothing better than a freshly baked loaf. 

We have the recipes for you. If you want to make the best banana bread, the joy is in the process. Get out your favorite non-seasonally appropriate holiday mixing bowl. Saint Patrick’s Day in the middle of autumn? Amazing. Halloween in the middle of January? Even better. The latter was our choice. 

There were a few points we kept consistent between each recipe: 

For the bananas:

• We found it’s best to use them while they’re overripe and almost black — perfect for the bananas you bought in good faith but didn’t use and two weeks later rediscover hiding in the corner, on the verge of collecting flies. Those are the ones to throw in the freezer for your banana bread endeavors. 
• Once ready, microwave them for 30 seconds to a minute, then cut a slit in the skin and squeeze the mushy insides into your mixture.  
• We also decided to omit any walnuts for personal taste, despite many recipes calling for them. 

For most of the recipes except the first, we veganized them:

• Instead of eggs, for example, we substituted applesauce
•  for butter, we used Country Crock’s vegan plant-based avocado oil butter
• These work similarly to the animal-based ingredients but obviously are not exactly the same, so the results may be slightly altered from the original recipes. 

Use what fits with your preferences and dietary needs. We also used salted butter for all of the recipes because we didn’t have unsalted butter available. It’s a small difference … probably.

Recipe 1: Foster’s Mom’s Classic Banana Bread

Our brown sugar was a bit hard, so in a way we were recreating the tradition of the Mardi Gras King’s Cake, except our plastic baby was the one rock-hard pebble of brown sugar we couldn’t break up. Galette de Roi? More like “Galette de Raw” for that raw piece of brown sugar. 

These were put in for 55 minutes when it should’ve been 45, so they were a little hard. But we didn’t check it this time, so it got extra crusty.

We prefer our bread without overcooked crust, but it tastes good on the inside!

Eva’s Review

I didn’t taste this one as it wasn’t veganized, but I know that it is the typical favorite of Foster and I can attest that he makes this recipe often. It surely did entice Gopher when it was locked away in a tupperware though, and he made quite the endeavor to qualify for his own review section on this paper. 

Foster’s Review

Usually when I make this recipe, I have little complaints as it is my  favorite. I did overbake this one, so there was some extra char flavor to the bottom part of the loaf. That is not the best addition flavor-wise. Even though it was overdone, the inside wasn’t dry. I feel that for all the recipes, using just two bananas sufficed. I could taste them the most in this recipe, which I enjoyed.

Recipe 2: Recipes by Janet’s Snickerdoodle Banana Bread 

Despite forgetting to add the bananas until the very end (the first ingredient of the recipe? Yeah, we put them in last) and omitting chocolate chips, this recipe still turned out well. This recipe also called for a cinnamon crust we made for the top so it strayed from the typical recipe.

Pro tip: do not leave your butter on top of the oven. It will start melting and get all over the stove. That is what happened to us.

Eva’s Review

I liked the crust. It added a layer of dimension and was perfectly cooked —a very nice crunch over the hot, airy bread. There was a good balance of moist and fluffy textures. I thought that it wasn’t too sweet. The notes of cinnamon were lovely. To be honest, this wasn’t really reminiscent of snickerdoodle, which has a wider spice profile. It was more just cinnamon sugar here, but it was still nice. There was also no molasses, which took away from the traditional snickerdoodle flavor.

Foster’s Review

The snickerdoodle banana bread recipe was quite enjoyable. The cinnamon flavor is more pronounced in this one. The extra crunch that came from the cinnamon crust on the top was really nice and is something I would add to other banana bread recipes I make in the future, even if it’s not a snickerdoodle loaf. Though I haven’t had snickerdoodle cookies before, it is a good and tasteful idea for a new take on banana bread. 

Recipe 3: The Hungry Blonde’s Honey Vanilla Banana Bread 

This recipe had an optional peanut butter glaze to top with, which we ended up making. We also ran out of vanilla by this time, so it was just a “honey” banana bread. 

Eva’s Review

This one was not as moist as Janet’s recipe, but it was very good. I thought the peanut butter glaze saved it from being too dry. I thoroughly enjoyed the honey flavor, which added another layer of dimension without making it too sweet and paired well with the peanut butter’s savory aspects. This loaf was perfectly fluffy. Even though we didn’t add vanilla, it was still very enjoyable, and I bet it would be even better with some bourbon vanilla paste or freshly scraped vanilla beans.

Foster’s Review

The element of peanut butter really added an extra dimension to a classic banana bread with honey. The recipe called for two to three bananas depending on their size, and we weren’t sure what qualified as small or large, so we ultimately went low and chose to use two. It definitely would not hurt for future iterations to go with more bananas, as with this attempt the banana flavor, in my opinion, was not as strong as it could have been. Overall, the recipe had a good flavor, and an addition of peanut butter chips into the batter as an alternative to a glaze could make an interesting addition.

I think I would say the honey banana bread was my favorite, the layers of flavor, especially with the peanut butter glaze, were phenomenal. Then the snickerdoodle would be my second favorite, the sugar crust on top was such a great touch. 

I would put the plain original banana bread recipe as my number one, the snickerdoodle recipe as the number two and the honey vanilla one as number three.

Header Image by Alex Carrasquillo