Banana Bread Ingredients
- All-purpose flour: 1 ¾ cups (210 grams)
- Baking powder: 1 teaspoon
- Baking soda: ½ teaspoon
- Salt: ½ teaspoon
- Butter: ½ cup (113 grams)
- Sugar: ¾ cup (150 grams)
- Bananas: 3 bananas
- Eggs: 2 large eggs
- Vanilla extract: 1 teaspoon
- Chocolate chips: 1 cup
Hey, I’m John Kanell. And today on Preppy Kitchen, we’re making an easy, delicious chocolate chip banana bread. So let’s get started.
First off, set your oven to 350. We want it nice and hot. And most importantly, take a look at your bananas. This is banana bread, and I would say this is gonna be a delicious banana to eat. This is almost ripe enough to use for baking, but we want it to be like a stinky banana that’s super mushy, the opposite of what I’d ever want to eat.
There’s a solution for that, though, so we’re gonna pop these into the oven—350 for about 10 minutes or until they blacken up. When they bake in the oven, it’ll break them down, kind of break those sugars down, and make them perfect for baking. Plop those onto a baking sheet. You want three bananas, about one and a half cups. I’m baking four just because these are a little bit small.
In you go. While the bananas are baking up, it’s time to get the dry ingredients together. So into a large bowl, I want 1 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour—that’s 210 grams. To puff things up, a teaspoon of baking powder and half a teaspoon of baking soda. I also want half a teaspoon of sea salt for a bit of contrast.
And in my recipes, I always like to use sea salt because it has a nice, mellow salty flavor. Salt can be totally different, by the way. If you’re using Diamond brand salt, it’s like half as salty as normal salt. So, be forewarned. And if you’re using an iodized salt, it has a very harsh salt flavor. Go with sea salt—you’ll be happy.
Grab a whisk. And we’re just gonna whisk this up and set it aside. This recipe is so easy, and it’s one of my son Lachlan’s favorite things to make on the weekend. I always like to do baking activities. We’ll make pizza together, simple breads like this, and the kids can take it in their snack box to school. They get to enjoy it and tell their friends, “I made this.” It’s a nice moment.
But this recipe is just plain delicious. So, it’s a must-make. Set this aside. Our scaling is done, and now we’re gonna grab our stand mixer and whip our butter until it is nice and fluffy. You could definitely do this with an electric hand mixer if you wanted to.
Now, into the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or a big bowl if you’re using an electric mixer. You want 1/2 a cup or 113 grams of beautiful, room-temperature butter. When I say room temperature, I mean I can bend the stick—it’s not breaking. It yields to the touch fairly easily but resists a bit.
Room temperature can be anything from melting to ice cold, depending on where and when you are. But in a recipe, when it says that, imagine the butter yielding to the touch, but you have to press down a bit. If it’s too cold, it just won’t fluff up. If it’s too hot, it won’t fluff up either. You want that air packed in so your bread is beautiful, light, and amazing.
Beat this on medium-high for about three minutes until it is light and fluffy. You’ll see the color change, it’ll become lighter, and the texture will be so whipped and cloudy. It makes a big difference. When people’s recipes don’t turn out, it’s usually because of mismeasuring the flour or not whipping the butter properly. Those are the two main culprits. That and overmixing.
Just a few minutes later, and I hope you can tell this is like a butter cloud. Let’s take a look—whipped and beautiful. You can see from the texture, it’s amazing. Scrape your bowl down. You don’t want any solid butter pieces in this mixture at all.
Now I have to tell you about the sugar. You have a choice. In the recipe, I’m just calling for sugar. I want 150 grams, or 3/4 of a cup. If you use plain granulated sugar, it’ll be delicious. If you use brown sugar, I think it’ll be even more delicious. Brown sugar has that moisture from the molasses, and it’ll keep the bread moister for longer.
So in a butter-based bread especially, you want to have some little extra trick to help you out. And in this case, it’s the brown sugar. I’m adding about half of the brown sugar—about 80 grams. The rest will be granulated sugar. I like using granulated sugar as well because it gives a fluffier texture with the butter, in my opinion.
I do want to control the moisture in this bread because the bananas have a ton of water. Take a look at your brown sugar and look for any giant lumps—those are not acceptable. Break those up. Your mixer is strong, but you don’t want to have a giant sugar lump in your batter. Those don’t mix well, and they create weird empty sweet voids when baked.
Add the sugar to the butter and mix for about three more minutes until it is light and fluffy. And yes, I will be scraping the bowl down at least one more time. I need two large eggs for this. I do not need any eggshells. So in a separate bowl, just crack your eggs and make sure there are no shards of shell hanging around—that would not be tasty.
Add the eggs in one at a time. Scraping the bowl down is important because the top can look soupy while the bottom is compacted. If you’re using an electric hand mixer and can rake the bowl with your beaters, you won’t have to scrape as much.
Last egg in, along with one teaspoon of vanilla. And by the way, if you wanted to add any flavors to this, go for it! Cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cardamom—anything your heart desires will be nice in this. If adding cinnamon, go with a teaspoon. Everything else, start with 1/4 teaspoon and adjust next time.
This is nice and mixed. Look at my bananas! What a difference a few minutes made. If you could feel this, they feel like pudding now, which is perfect for banana bread. Just a little time in the oven is all you need. Let them cool down for a few minutes because you don’t want scalding hot bananas. They should be room temperature-ish.
Slice them open and pop them into your measuring cup. Kind of gross, kind of cool. They smell amazing—like proper baking bananas. You can see that I actually used four bananas, and I’ll have just enough. When you bake them, they lose structure and shrink slightly in volume.
Mash them up with a knife or a fork since they’re so gooey. Love that sound. Everything’s ready. With the mixer on low, add your flour in gradually. Mix until the flour has almost disappeared. I still see some streaks, and that’s fine. Overmixing is the number two culprit in baking mistakes. You’ll activate the flour’s gluten, which gives bread its chewy texture, but this is basically cake, so we don’t want that.
Oops. I was supposed to add the bananas before the dry ingredients. But I’ve done this before. No worries—just fold them in now. This is a stir-together batter, and you can’t mess it up. Mix that in, about ten seconds.
Reserve a handful of chocolate chips for the top. The rest, add in while mixing on low. Grab a 9×5 inch loaf pan. Give it a couple of sprays or butter and flour it if you prefer.
Before adding your batter, give it one last pass with your spatula to make sure the bottom looks like the top. No hidden streaks. Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan. Level the surface with a spatula and sprinkle the top with your reserved chocolate chips.
My bread’s ready for the oven. 60 minutes at 350. Then I’ll show you how golden and delicious it looks.
Give your bread a slice, and just like that, it’s ready to enjoy. That is pillowy soft, pure banana flavor studded with gooey chocolate throughout. A match made in heaven. I hope you get a chance to make this recipe!
