Banana Bread Recipe Review:
☆☆☆☆☆
“Ben is taking baking to men approachably. His recipes leave me breathless every time. Because I’m choking on them. I have a genetically small esophagus.”
- Gerard Sheltins
Overview:
Yield: One delicious loaf
Prep Time: 30 minutes deciphering recipe + 10 minutes actually prepping
Cook time: 60 minutes + 3 extra minutes so it’s overdone like your friends have come to expect
Temp: 350 F for Americans, 449.8 K for Europeans
Banana Bread Recipe:
Hey everybody, today I would like to share with you a very special recipe! But first, some unsolicited personal anecdotes. This recipe was passed down to me from my aunt. She was blunt but still the kindest woman you could ever meet, and she basically raised me. My parents weren’t very present because my mom was a physician, and my dad was highly involved in the church. While they were saving lives and souls, I was left alone at home to stir my tears into the wet ingredients of the mixing bowl.
This recipe will make the BEST banana bread, though. My aunt’s secret was to use a special kind of banana called a plantain. These bananas are a little different than your domestic American bananas. My favorite variety is the French plantain, which as you might expect, grows in parts of Africa and Asia. [1] Speaking of Asia, I’ll never forget the mission trip I took to Indonesia when I first got to see these bananas. Oh my goodness! The culture, the language, the food, the music, the people! I saw all those things there.
Let me describe the bread in greater detail for you. It’s moist but not soggy, has a lovely crusty top, a soft bready texture, bold flavors that overcome adversity, and an optional nutty crunch factor that somehow makes up for the pandemic.
Speaking of banana bread, the other day I was walking with one of my besties, Marsha, whose son plays ultimate frisbee for Trinity Academy, and my uncle John is the principle of Trinity Academy, and he’s on the church board with my dad, who is concerned about the economy, you know GDP, GED, GPA, IUD, all that stuff, so we might be headed for a recession, meaning it’s a buyer’s market, at least that’s what my friend Tarnilla is hoping, and she said yes, he’s doing well. Her son I mean.
Ok, there’s a little background information for you. Time for the recipe!:
Flour (single purpose)
Baking Soda (or powder, there’s no difference)
Salt (from the Tibetan plateau)
Cinnamon (from the ground)
Butter (body temperature)
Brown Sugar (even though it compacts infinitely, I’m only going to give you a volume, not a weight)
Eggs (small or medium)
Plain Yogurt or Sour Cream (Or really anything that’s not good by itself. *sad sniffle*)
Plantains (French variety if you have it, Horn variety if not)
Vanilla Extract (just ‘cause)
Walnuts (to ward off your munchy friends with nut allergies)
Chocolate chips (semisour) [2]
I still just don’t feel like I’ve given you enough of my personal history to reveal the measurements for the ingredients. Okay fine, I’ll give you the measurements, but I’m going to make them very, very small, so you keep scrolling past them when you’re trying to find them, and every time you scroll past, you leave another butter/banana smear on your phone screen, so it’s mostly obscured anyways:
6 cups flour
0 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup salt
A pinch and a punch of cinnamon
8 sticks butter
¾ tbsp brown sugar
1/2 egg
1/3 cup plain yogurt or sour cream
All your plantains
1 cup vanilla extract
An optional amount of walnuts
An optional amount of chocolate chips [3]
If you’re reading this, you managed to find the recipe after all. That means you are an industrious person who deserves this recipe. Please, enjoy every morsel and mouthful!
FAQ:
Can I make it overnight?
Can I freeze it?
Where is the recipe?
Those are great questions. If you liked my plantain ben-ana bread recipe, check out these other recipes you may like:
Triple Banana Bread
Banana Peel Bread
Extra Nutty Banana Bread
Bake-free Banana Bread
P.S. For an actually good banana bread recipe that I used for reference, try out this one: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/best-banana-bread-recipe/
References
