Hands-down, the best banana bread recipe I’ve ever used. Granted, it’s hard to mess up banana bread. But this recipe always turns out perfectly – moist but not dense, a sweet crisp crust that is never tough, and the coconut is my favorite element.
I think the key to good banana bread is using extremely ripe bananas. I say leave them until there is almost no yellow left on the peel. Then they are ready.
Everything for this recipe comes together really quickly.
The mixing of ingredients is a little different for this recipe. Most quick breads, including most banana bread recipes I’ve seen, use a creaming method where the liquids and sugars are creamed together, the eggs and vanilla are added, the flour is just mixed in, and the nuts are folded in as the last step. The MSBH recipe skips around, adding the eggs and vanilla after the flour, in the same step as the nuts and coconut. Wacky! But the results speak for themselves.
The recipe yields two loaves.
I’ve found that an hour is a good starting point for the baking time on this recipe, but you have to rely on a toothpick test to finally know when they’re done. I’ve put a couple pictures here of the toothpick to show how to tell when it’s done, since I’ve been asked before. Here is the toothpick after being stuck into the loaf after 65 minutes of baking. The loaves have a deep golden crust, but clearly the wet batter on the toothpick show they have more baking to do:
And here is a new toothpick after another 12 minutes of baking. There is still some stuff on the toothpick, but it’s crumbs, not wet batter. This indicates the bread is done.
The bread cools on a cooling rack and that’s all she wrote. It freezes really well, tastes great as toast, and keeps well unwrapped (just cover the cut end with plastic wrap). I love this recipe!
Thanks Amber for suggestion this receipe. I find myself buying banana’s to let them go ripe – just so I can make this bread.
I’m so glad you like it. Remember, you and simply eat bananas too.
[...] A mixer is used to cream the butter and sugar and beat in the eggs but the rest of the ingredients are folded in by hand. Getting my eggs to mix in with the butter/sugar was a nightmare and never really worked. Consequently, I had blobs of butter/sugar near the end. I think the muffins would have turned out a little airier if I add the eggs after the rest of the wet ingredients have been mixed in, maybe even after the dry ingredients (like it’s done with the Banana Bread). [...]
This is my favorite banana bread recipe too. I’ve never had it fail and I’ve been using it for years. I don’t understand the order of ingredients in your book. In my book the eggs, oil and sugar are mixed, the flour added and then the bananas and buttermilk. Its quick and easy to mix!
[...] is one of the most-used sections of the book for me. In fact, the recipe for Banana Bread is the one that I’ve made far more often than any other from the MSBH. It’s so easy, [...]
Great photos and ideas.
You can find the recipe for Martha Stewart’s Banana Nut Bread at http://www.food.com, though the cookbook has a lot of great recipes.
Hi Jan – Thanks for the kind words! I checked out the food.com recipe (there’s actually two Banana Nut Bread recipes there attributed to Martha Stewart) and it looks great but it is not the same recipe that is in the MSBH.
can you post this recipe?
No, I have chosen not to type out and post the recipes from the MSBH. More about that here –> http://bakingthroughmsbh.wordpress.com/looking-for-the-actual-recipes/