Chocolate banana bread recipe (2024)

FAQs

Can you put too much banana in banana bread? ›

Fight the urge to use more banana than called for in your recipe. Using too much banana could make your bread heavy and damp in the center, causing it to appear undercooked and unappealing. If you have bananas leftover, you can always freeze them for later use.

Adding more eggs makes for a spongy, less flavorful banana bread. Doubling the number of eggs I was using resulted in a spongy cake with a moist texture.

Using a lot of bananas adds excess moisture, and there are two ways to get rid of it. You could either add more flour or increase the baking time. Add a tablespoon of extra flour at a time into the batter and give it a good whisk until its consistency starts to look right: thick but runny enough to fall off a spoon.

2 bananas: 1-1/3 cups chopped | 1 cup mashed. 3 bananas: 2 cups chopped | 1-1/2 cups mashed. 4 bananas: 2-2/3 cups chopped | 2 cups mashed.

Brown, overripe bananas are sweeter because in the ripening process the starches in the banana are converted to sugar. You can even use super-soft, black bananas that have a really strong smell and are oozy inside. As long as they're not moldy, there's no such thing as too-ripe bananas for banana bread.

Using too few eggs will make your desserts dense, but using too many will make them rubbery. The explanation for this lies in the fact that eggs are made up of protein. As Fine Cooking explains, when the protein in eggs combines with the protein in flour, they produce the overall structure of the baked good.

Banana. Use ripe bananas to add moisture. One mashed banana can replace one egg in cakes and pancakes. Since it will add a bit of flavor, make sure that it's compatible with the other ingredients of the recipe.

Mashed Banana

For this swap, use 1/4 cup of mashed ripe banana per egg. Note that riper bananas have more sugar and moisture, so consider reducing other sweeteners and liquids in the recipe.

Let the bananas ripen (and overripen) at room temperature. Depending on the weather, this could take a few days, or up to a week. The best bananas for banana bread aren't yellow; they're black. Or they're at least streaked with black/brown, with just the barest hint of green at the stem.

The bananas need to be mostly or completely brown, with a mushy, almost pudding-like texture. If your bananas are too ripe to eat, chances are they'd be perfect for this recipe. How can you ripen bananas faster?

How old should bananas be for banana bread? ›

Just wait a day or three, depending on how unripe they were when you bought them. In no time - much less than a week, at the most - they'll be golden yellow with brown and black blotches; that's when they're ready to be used for banana bread.

If so, I would dump out all the flour, remeasure and then add in the correct amount, subtracting a little bit (say a half teaspoon) for the flour you couldn't remove that stuck to the other ingredients. Was it before you baked it?

You may not have followed the recipe correctly. For example, you may have added too much liquid, or you may not have added enough of some dry ingredient, and therefore your dough may have had too much moisture. Your recipe may be faulty.

Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is the raising agent and this can sometimes taste bitter or soapy if the wrong quantity is used. Make sure that you measure the bicarbonate of soda with a proper 1 teaspoon/5ml measuring spoon and the spoon measurement should be level.

leave it in the oven to cool down with the oven slightly open so that most of the moisture can escape.

While there's no blanket rule, sticking to one to two bananas per day shouldn't cause issues for most people. With that said, remember that they are relatively high in carbohydrates, so eating them along with protein or fat is also advisable to support stable energy levels.

Fill the pan until it's two-thirds full, and if there is any remaining batter, fill up a muffin tin. This ensures you get a beautifully risen loaf instead of a potentially flat loaf in a 9×5. Now that you know the importance of pan sizes, it's time to make a loaf of the Best-Ever Banana Bread!

The banana bread will not rise much during baking and may sink slightly in the centre on cooling, but should not collapse competely. If it did collapse then it is likely that the banana bread had not quite baked fully (and in light of the ingredient change may have needed a slightly longer baking time).