Banana Bread Recipe That’s Really Good

This banana bread recipe makes an awesome snack, breakfast or even dessert. This one has chocolate chips in it, but if those aren’t your thing, you can always leave them out.

This recipe is a spin on one that a buddy of mine at work used to make. He was bringing it to the office about every three months until the pandemic struck in 2020, so I figured I’d take matters into my own hands and bake one myself. There’s no affiliate links in this recipe yet.

What You Will Need for the Banana Bread

What It Is	Name	Where To Find
Cookware	3 Bowls – 2 medium, 1 large	Amazon
Cookware	Spatula	Amazon
Cookware	9 x 5 inch (or similar) baking pan	Amazon
Cookware	Measuring spoons	Amazon
Cookware	Measuring cups	Amazon
Cookware	Butter knife	Amazon
Cookware	Mason Jar or something to smash the bananas	Amazon
Cookware	Basting brush for adding olive oil to baking pan	Amazon
Cookware	Cooling rack	Amazon
Ingredient	2 cups all-purpose flower	Store
Ingredient	1 teaspoon baking powder	Store
Ingredient	1 teaspoon baking soda	Store
Ingredient	1 teaspoon salt	Store
Ingredient	3 ripe bananas	Store
Ingredient	1 tablespoon skim milk	Store
Ingredient	1/2 cup soft, unsalted butter (typically 1 full stick)	Store
Ingredient	1 cup white sugar	Store
Ingredient	2 large eggs	Store
Ingredient	1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips	Store
Ingredient	Something to grease the baking pan, like olive oil, Crisco, or just a non-stick pan	Store

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Let’s Make This Banana Bread Recipe

Grab your 9×5 baking pan.

Grab something to grease the pan. I used olive oil (1 teaspoon).

Another time I made this, half a teaspoon almost worked, but some did get really stuck to the bottom of the glass dish I was using. You’ll want 1 teaspoon. It turned out really well this way and slid out of the pan smoothly once it was done in the oven.

I decided to use a basting brush to really move everything around in the 9 x 5 pan.

Wash your hands after if you just use them to grease the pan for the banana bread.

Grab the flower and a 1 cup measuring cup, along with the medium sized mixing bowl. You’ll also want a butter knife for this part.

Pour the 1st cup of flour into the bowl.

Then get the second cup of flour in there.

Throw 1 teaspoon of the baking powder into the bowl with the flower.

Mix it around a bit.

Grab the baking soda for this part of the banana bread recipe.

Toss a teaspoon of the baking soda into your mixture.

Next, grab your salt.

Throw a teaspoon of salt into the snow-like mixture that you have at this point. Mix it around a bit.

Set this bowl aside with the greased baking pan and grab the other medium bowl.

Grab some skim milk. Pour a tablespoon of milk into the bowl. You can probably also just do a splash of milk, that’s what I did.

Start peeling your bananas and putting them into the bowl.

Make sure your peels get in the trash, nobody wants to slip and fall in the kitchen.

You will need something to smash up your bananas like I did. I suggest using a mason jar to smash the bananas up or a small glass, but other things like forks can also work.

Before smashing the bananas, now would be a good time to pre-heat your oven to 325F.

You can also cut up the bananas with a spatula before smashing them with the mason jar (or comparable smasher, maybe even your fist).

The bananas should look something like this after smashing:

Grab the butter

Then, set the bowl of bananas and milk aside and grab a third bowl. Make sure that this bowl you use is the biggest one that you have since everything is going to get dumped into it in a few more steps.

Grab one stick of unsalted butter (or 1/2 a cup’s worth). It would help to leave a stick of butter out on the counter for an hour or two before starting this banana bread recipe. Since an hour wasn’t enough time to get it soft, I threw it in the microwave.

In case you need to microwave it, grab a little bowl and throw the butter in there for 15-30 seconds.

Dump one cup of sugar in the bowl.

Then, mix it all around until it looks like this:

Grab some eggs. Crack the first one in there.

Then, crack the second.

Mix all of that around really well.

Then, go and get the banana/milk mixture to dump in with the sugar/butter/egg mix.

Mix all that up really well.

Once that’s nice and mixed together, it will be time to grab the third bowl. You may want to use a butter knife to scrape the spatula off and put all the batter back into the bowl. Don’t lick it off, you might get salmonella because of the raw egg.

Make sure you use a big bowl. I’ve made this recipe in the past with bowls that were too small and lost some of the dry ingredients when mixing them.

Once the wet and dry mix is combined thoroughly, get the chocolate chips.

The chocolate we’ve all been waiting for in this banana bread recipe:

Pour one cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips into the large mixing bowl. Mix those around really well so they get evenly spread out.

Grab the greased baking pan from earlier.

Pour the banana bread recipe ingredients in there, smoothing it out with the spatula.

You don’t want it to be overflowing since it will rise past the top during baking.

It should look something like this before going into the oven:

Scrape out any remaining banana bread recipe mix from the bowl and put it in the baking pan.

Set the baking pan in the oven.

Your oven should be preheated to 325 degrees Fahrenheit by now.

Set the timer for 70 minutes on your chocolate chip banana bread

Or 1 hour and 10 minutes, same thing.

Once it’s done, it should look like this:

Another shot:

Let the chocolate chip banana bread cool for 10 minutes.

Setting another timer helps. Also, if you have a cooling rack, get that setup on the counter.

After that, find a toothpick

If you can stick a toothpick in the center and pull it out clean, you’ll know the banana bread is done. I didn’t have a toothpick, so I grabbed a meat thermometer. It worked just as well.

Use a spatula to take the chocolate chip banana bread out of the baking pan and set it on a cooling rack. I did this when it was about 5 minutes into cooling. It’s probably best to wait the full 10 minutes because mine did feel like it was about to fall apart while I moved it.

It will be tempting to start eating it right away, but let it cool.

Once it’s done cooling, dig in! This banana bread recipe has a great “outer-crust-to-moist-insides” ratio.

This serves 10, but those are generous servings. You can really consider it around 10-20 servings depending on the size of the pieces you cut.

Store it in some foil:

Card

The Recipe – about an hour and a half total

1. Grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan (or similar baking dish)

2. Mix 2 cups flour, 1 TSP baking soda, 1 TSP baking powder and 1 TSP salt together in the first bowl.

3. Smash up 3 bananas and 1 TBSP skim milk in a second bowl. Mix that around and preheat the oven to 325 F.

4. Mix 1/2 cup of butter and 1 cup sugar in the third bowl until creamy and fluffy (looks a little like grits). Mix in the two eggs, 1 at a time. Mix thoroughly between each egg.

5. Dump banana mixture into the butter/sugar mix. Stir that all together well.

6. Dump the dry mix from the first bowl into the third bowl with the banana / everything else and mix all that together. Once the wet and dry ingredients are combined, dump in the cup of chocolate chips and mix those in there.

7. Pour the mix into the greased baking pan, using the spatula to get as much mixture into the pan as possible. Bake at 325 F for 70 minutes. When it’s done, you should be able to stick a toothpick in the center and pull it out clean without batter or anything on the pick.

8. Take it out of the baking pan and let the banana bread cool on a rack or a plate for 10 minutes before cutting.

How The Banana Bread Recipe Calories Were Calculated

Banana bread calorie calculations
Calories for each ingredient	Calories
Chocolate chips (1 cup) calories	1120
Flour (2 cups)	880
1 cup of sugar	720
1 stick of butter	800
Olive oil, 1 teaspoon	30
Bananas, 11 ounces	277
2 eggs	140
Total	3967
	Weight
Bread weight (in ounces)	42
	Calories
Calories per ounce	94
	Calories
Calories for serving size of 4 ounces	376
	Number of Servings
Amount of servings	10.5

Did you make the banana bread recipe? Leave a review and let other people know if there’s better ways to do it!