Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Over ripe bananas were on special so I bought four. While I was getting everything ready to start baking I realized I was out of walnuts. I didn't have time to go to the store so I looked for something else. I didn't have anything else. Peanut butter! Banana and peanut butter go great together! So I put 1/4 cup of peanut butter in the batter and thoroughly mixed it in. I baked it for an hour and ten minutes.

The result wasn't as good as I had imagined. The extra fat in the peanut butter overwhelmed the sugar and banana in the recipe.  At first I thought, don't make that again! But later it occurred to me that maybe it just needed extra sugar. I think I'll try this again but next time I'll add 2-3 tablespoons of brown sugar to the batter and tasting it.  It might take up to 1/4 cup of brown sugar to tame the peanut butter but I don't want it to get too sweet either. With all that in mind, here is the easiest and best banana bread recipe I've tried.

Banana Bread

4 ripe bananas - mashed

1/3 cup melted butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg beaten

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup flour

optional:

1/4 cup toasted walnuts

or

1/4 cup peanut butter

brown sugar 

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Mix wet ingredients, then dry.  Line loaf pan with parchment, lightly spray with oil, add batter and bake 1 hour or until a toothpick in center is clean of batter, crumbs ok. It finishes baking outside the oven, so if it's perfect when it comes out of the oven, it will be dry by the time it's cooled. I had to bake an extra 10 minutes with the peanut butter.

I just tried it with brown sugar on top and it's much better so baking it in should work. Up to about 1/4 cup of brown sugar I estimate.