Easy Banana Bread Recipe (Top-Rated) - Celebrating Sweets (2024)

FAQs

Can you substitute oil for shortening in banana bread? ›

If a recipe calls for melted shortening, vegetable oil is a good swap.

Square pan – This here is the game changer. I bake the banana bread in a 9×9 square cake pan instead of a loaf pan.

Allow the bread to cool completely on a cooling rack before wrapping it in plastic wrap or transferring it to an airtight container. Warm bread wrapped in plastic wrap leads to condensation which leads to mold. Also, cooling the bread firms up the structure and makes for cleaner slices.

Margarine and butter can both be used as a substitute for shortening, though their moisture contents should be taken into consideration before making the swap. While shortening is 100% fat, margarine and butter contain a small percentage of water (so, shortening adds more fat, thus more richness and tenderness).

Shortening traps more air bubbles and has a higher melting point than butter, so recipes using shortening tend to produce baked goods with more lift and that hold their shape during baking. Interior texture will also be softer and lighter.

Grease Your Pan

For a picture-worthy loaf of banana bread, don't go overboard with greasing your loaf pan. Grease the bottom of the pan just ½ inch up the sides for a uniform loaf with a slightly rounded top. If you grease all the way up the sides of the pan, the loaf can sink, resulting in a flat top.

If you've ever baked brownies or banana bread that turn out raw, underbaked, gummy, or sunken in the center, it may be due to a glass pan. Oppositely, if you've ever baked cookies that burnt on the bottom or a lemon loaf that got too crispy on the edges, it could be due to using a dark nonstick aluminum pan.

Cooking sprays or a good slathering of “cake goop” can do the trick, but one of the most reliable ways to ensure that your loaf comes out of the pan easily is to line the pan with parchment, which you can grasp and use to pull the loaf out of the pan.

Our Favorite Alternative to Toothpicks

Look at your knife set and find the one with the thinnest blade. Then insert the blade into the center of the cake. If the knife comes out clean, the cake is done. If batter or crumbs stick to the blade, let your cake bake a few minutes more and retest with a clean knife.

Excess moisture (when compared to the recipe's dry ingredients) means a greater potential for banana bread to sink in the middle. Recipes that provide you with the exact amount of mashed bananas by measuring cup (e.g. 1 ½ cups of mashed bananas) or by weight (e.g. grams) tend to have fewer problems.

Can you leave freshly baked banana bread out overnight? ›

If you're planning to eat your banana bread within three to four days, it can be left out at room temperature. To keep it fresh, place a paper towel in the bottom of an airtight container. Place the loaf of banana bread on top, add another paper towel, and put the lid on the container.

Timing: It is generally recommended to refrigerate the batter for no more than 24 hours [1]. Beyond that, the leavening agents in the batter may lose their effectiveness, resulting in a denser final product.

Banana bread recipes typically ask you to use overripe bananas so that they're easier to mush. This means it's tempting to toss all your bananas into the mix when you're ready to bake, to avoid food waste. But if you add too much of the fruit into your batter, your bread could turn out mushy, heavy, and wet.

Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or a digital thermometer inserted into the center reads 200-205°F, about 55 to 65 minutes. Cool in the pan on a cooling rack for 15 minutes before removing the loaf from the pan to finish cooling completely.

To use shortening as a substitute for oil in baking, you can swap the two using equal amounts. This can be to substitute any type of cooking oil—avocado oil, vegetable oil, olive oil, and other cooking oils.

To use shortening as a substitute for oil in baking, you can swap equal amounts. It is important to note that because shortening is a solid fat, using shortening instead of oil can change the texture of baked goods.

Solid Shortening to Oil Conversion: 1 cup of solid shortening can be substituted with 3/4 cup of vegetable oil [1]. Therefore, 1/2 cup of shortening would be approximately equal to 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of oil [1].

The most common way to replace oil in baked goods is by using applesauce or mashed banana. Other fruit purees work too, but most of them add more flavor – apple and banana are neutral enough to not overpower other flavors.