- This one-bowl banana bread comes together with pantry staples and no mixer, making it an easy go-to for breakfast, snack, or dessert.
- The recipe is endlessly adaptable and forgiving—swap in butter for oil, use yogurt instead of sour cream, or fold in chocolate chips, nuts, or dried fruit.
- Ripe or frozen bananas ensure a moist, tender crumb with deep banana flavor, and the loaf also bakes beautifully as muffins or mini loaves.
A basic banana bread is the kind of recipe that earns a permanent spot in your kitchen because it solves so many problems with almost no effort. It uses pantry staples, needs no mixer, and turns neglected bananas into something cozy and shareable—breakfast, snack, or dessert. This version is intentionally simple and endlessly adaptable, so you can make it exactly the way you like it and with what you already have.
It’s also wonderfully forgiving. Slightly short on sugar? Prefer oil to butter? Want to use yogurt instead of sour cream? This loaf takes the swap and still bakes up tender. Warm spices are optional; a pinch of cinnamon or cardamom is lovely, but not required. Treat the batter as a blank canvas: fold in up to 1 cup total of chocolate chips, toasted nuts, or shredded coconut; add a handful of dried fruit; or finish the top with turbinado sugar for sparkle and crunch. You can bake it as muffins or mini loaves—just start checking earlier and pull when a tester comes out clean.
Frozen bananas work perfectly here, too. Keep overripe bananas in the freezer, then thaw fully in a bowl before baking. Include the flavorful juices in your mash; if the batter looks unusually thin, hold back a tablespoon or two. Thawed bananas actually intensify the banana flavor, giving you that plush, moist crumb everyone loves.
In short, this loaf is a reliable base that welcomes tweaks, forgives substitutions, and helps you waste less—exactly the kind of recipe worth keeping at the ready.
Add in chocolate or nuts
This banana bread is a simple base with flavor and a very tender crumb. Keep it plain for an everyday loaf, or dress it up with add-ins. Fold in up to 1 cup total of chocolate chips, toasted nuts, or shredded coconut to suit your taste. Disperse them using a spatula for the best bite in each slice. Mix gently at the end to avoid toughening the crumb, then bake until the top is bronzed and the tester comes out clean.
How do you ripen bananas quickly?
If you don’t have overripe bananas on hand, you can speed up the process a few different ways. If you can wait two or three days, place peel-on ripe bananas in a paper bag along with an apple. The apple will give off ethylene gas, which speeds up the ripening process for bananas and other fruit.
If you have at least three hours, place ripe bananas in the freezer. The peels will darken and the fruit will soften somewhat after you thaw the bananas.
If you need your bananas to ripen faster, turn on your oven. F&W’s Justin Chapple explains in this video how roasting peel-on bananas at 350°F for five to seven minutes transforms them into the dark mush that makes banana bread so special. You can also microwave peel-on bananas; simply poke them with a fork a few times, and microwave them for a minute. Check your bananas, and if they aren’t quite soft enough, microwave them for another 30 seconds.
