Kid-Friendly Banana Bread

Kid- Friendly Banana Bread is the perfect way to use up overripe bananas — while also enjoying time cooking an easy dessert recipe together with your kids!

Welcome back to Sunday Scratchups, your weekly recipe from scratch around grocery sales and affordable ingredients. The week we originally made this banana bread, bananas were, of course, on sale. But: Bananas, right? They’re pretty darn affordable to begin with. If your house is anything like our house, you might often end up with a couple at the end of the bunch that are riper than you’d like.

That’s the perfect time to break out this Kid Friendly Banana Bread recipe! This is the perfect way to use up overripe bananas, while you also get to enjoy some time cooking up an easy dessert recipe with your kids.

Check out my small kitchen helper, and tell me: How you could say no to this face? Buoyed by our recent success with Bee-bim Bop, Mr. 8 declared that we’d be making banana bread next. We went to the library, he chose a children’s cookbook with a recipe he liked, and we baked the Bodacious Banana Bread recipe from Cool Quick Breads: Easy Recipes for Kids to Bake — but with just a couple of twists.

Mr. 8 made the following additions to the original recipe: Cinnamon (“because it should be cinnamon-y, Mom!”) and walnuts (“because I like nuts”). We also didn’t bother to sift the flour. Next time, I’d probably also add chocolate chips (“because I like chocolate”). Update: Definitely add the chocolate chips! See the 2020 update below the recipe. 🙂

The most difficult part of this recipe? Waiting for the bananas to ripen enough to get started! We probably should have given them another couple of days, but this banana bread turned out great nonetheless.

Kid-Friendly Banana Bread

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 overripe bananas
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or chopped pecans (optional)
Chocolate chips, to taste (optional)

Directions

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in large mixing bowl. In separate bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy. (I didn’t bother pulling out the mixer here, and just hand-whisked everything.) Add sugar and eggs to the butter and mix well. Peel bananas, then chop into coins and add to the egg mixture and whisk until just mixed in.

Stir in dry ingredients until just mixed. Stir in walnuts, then pour batter into greased loaf pan. Bake for about 60 minutes at 350 degrees, or until knife inserted in middle of loaf comes out clean. Cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then remove from pan and let cool as much as you can stand it before slicing.

Note: We originally used just 1/2 tsp cinnamon in this recipe, but upped it to 1.5 tsp in subsequent batches. It’s so much better that way that I’ve changed it up in the ingredient list, and I also highly recommend adding chocolate chips. 🙂

Now, that’s good banana bread

How can you go wrong with fresh-baked banana bread, I ask you? See the 2020 update below; I highly recommend throwing some chocolate chips in yours as well. Mr. 8 declared this the best thing we’ve ever made. (It always tastes better when you make it yourself, though, doesn’t it?) He’s still pondering our next cooking adventure…

This easy banana bread is still great in 2020!

I just made this banana bread again in March 2020, adding chocolate chips as well as some crushed up pecans & hazelnuts from a can of mixed nuts (because I was out of walnuts). Still so good, that this is our go-to recipe years later! This banana bread recipe stays moist, and the chocolate chips worked so well to kick everything up another notch.

Kid Friendly Banana Bread, printable recipe

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Kid-Friendly Banana Bread

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Course Dessert

Cuisine dessert

Keyword banana bread, bananas, dessert, kid friendly

Total Time 1 hour hour 25 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Rachel Singer

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1.5 tsp cinnamon
• 1/3 cup butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 overripe bananas
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts or chopped pecans optional
• chocolate chips optional, to taste

Instructions

• Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in large mixing bowl.
• In separate bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy. (I didn't bother pulling out the mixer here, and just hand-whisked everything.)
• Add sugar and eggs to the butter and mix well.
• Peel bananas, then chop into coins and add to the egg mixture and whisk until just mixed in.
• Stir in dry ingredients until just mixed.
• Stir in walnuts, then pour batter into greased loaf pan.
• Bake for about 60 minutes at 350 degrees, or until knife inserted in middle of loaf comes out clean.
• Cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then remove from pan and let cool as much as you can stand it before slicing.

Notes

We originally used just 1/2 tsp cinnamon in this recipe, but upped it to 1.5 tsp in subsequent batches. It's so much better that way that I've changed it up in the ingredient list, and I also highly recommend adding chocolate chips. 🙂

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