The Capsule Pantry: No-Rise Banana Bread
The return of everyone's favorite lockdown treat (minus the lockdown)
Welcome to The Capsule Pantry. Highly flexible, waste-reducing recipes delivered to your inbox every Wednesday, designed to be adapted to what’s in your fridge and pantry. The Capsule Pantry is paid-subscriber only. If you’d like full access, sign up for $5 a month or $50 a year and revolutionize the way you cook today.
There are two ways to quickly ripen bananas - in the microwave and the lesser known 37,000 feet method.
Every single time I fly, I take a banana with me and every single time, I forget to eat it. The Haribo I bought at the airport is always much more tempting.
There is something about the altitude that screws with bananas. They go up there looking great and arrive looking worse than me after an airport session on the Sangria.
My husband never eats his either, thus I had two very ripe bananas on my hands this week that I didn’t want to throw away.
Enter everyone’s favorite lockdown recipe - banana bread.
I don’t want to give you flashbacks to 2020, but banana bread is still one of my go-to’s (and it was pre-Covid too). They’re all chewy and last for days and there are so many ways to use up the leftovers. Banana bread is a shoo-in for the Simple and Straightforward recipe index.
This one is made without a leavening agent because I don’t travel with baking soda and didn’t want to buy it for one recipe (that wouldn’t be very S+S of me). It turned out freaking great.
Here’s the recipe, plus variations and 3 ways to use up what’s leftover.
The original recipe
Makes one loaf
280g / 1.25 cups softened butter
280g / 1.25 cups white sugar
280g / 2 cups all-purpose flour
2 large eggs, beaten
4 ripe bananas, mashed
Walnuts - a small handful
Pre-heat the oven to 180C / 350F.
Cream the butter and sugar for as long as your poor arm can manage it (or in an electric mixer for 3-4 minutes).
Add the beaten eggs and a small pinch of the flour (stops the curdling) and mix.
Fold in the rest of the flour, mashed bananas, and walnuts.
Pour the batter into a greased loaf tin.
Stick in the oven for up to 50 minutes. Check every 10 minutes after the 30-minute mark by sticking something sharp into the middle of the loaf. If it comes out clean, it’s done.
Variations
Swap the sugar for honey - use around 1 cup.
Omit the walnuts or add chocolate chips, toasted almonds, or hazelnuts instead.
By all means, use leavening agents! Either use self-raising flour or add 1 teaspoon of baking soda.
Ways to use the leftovers
Banana bread French toast
Swap regular bread for banana bread. Breakfast of champions.
Traditional British bread pudding
Not to be confused with bread and butter pudding, British bread pudding is like a dense brick of cooked bread and spice that can be found in old-school bakeries across the country. Use this recipe but swap the bread for your leftover banana bread.
Banana bread biscotti
I am in Italy right now after all…
Cut your banana bread into thin, skinny slices. Pre-heat the oven to 160C / 325F. Arrange your slices on a tray and bake on each side for around 15 minutes. Keep an eye on them!