Banana bread is a delicious snack fresh out of the oven, served cold with or without butter, or toasted with lashings of organic butter. In our house though, it rarely makes it past the first sitting, and if there is some left over I generally freeze it in slices and use it for a lunch box treat.
This very simple banana bread recipe is based on the very first banana bread I tasted, but with a few modifications. Some banana breads are real bread, made with yeast. Most are “quick bread” leavened with baking powder rather than yeast, and frankly, more like cake than bread. This recipe is for the latter kind.
Ingredient and Instructions
Set the oven to 350 F or 175 C
Grease a loaf pan of roughly 21cmx10cm (8″x4.5″) and line the bottom with baking paper.
1. Dry: Sift together the following ingredients in a large bowl (full disclosure – I almost never sift, but you will tend to get a better result if you do):
- 3/4 cup wholemeal wheat or spelt flour
- 3/4 cup plain wheat or spelt flour
- 1&1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
2. Wet: In a separate bowl, mix together
- 1 egg
- 3 mashed bananas (tip, freeze slightly over ripe bananas for easier mashing)
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup cooking oil (I use light olive or macademia nut oil – I used to use extra virgin olive oil but it has a very strong flavour)
- Shredded lemon peel of 1/2 – 1 lemon
- 1/2 cup sultanas/raisons (optional)
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until just mixed. Pour into loaf pan and bake for 50-55 minutes.
Variations: If you would like a banana nut bread, substutute your prefered nuts for the sultanas – walnuts and peacans are both common choices.You can also throw in a handful or two of fresh blackberries instead of, or as well as, the sultanas.
I have used Xylitol instead of white sugar and it has come out just as well. You can vary the amount of wholemeal vs white flour. The more wholemeal you use the more oil you will need to keep it moist.
You can turn it into banana-zucchini bread by substituting one smallish zucchini for one of the bananas.
Muffins: You can use this same recipe for making deliciously moist banana muffins. Just divide the mixture into 12 muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes.
I love this recipe. I use it to make school lunchbox snacks. I either slice the banana bread up, butter it, then cut each slice in half and fold together like a sandwich and freeze individually, or I make banana bread muffins and freeze them.
Or, if I don’t have enough individual container on hand, I slice it up and freeze the whole loaf, with a small piece of wax paper between each slice.
That’s if it doesn’t all get eaten before it’s even had time to cool down, which does happen too! The only thing is, it is quite crumbly when fresh, so frozen and buttered seems to work better for school snacks.