Best of the Best, Day Five: Ultimate Banana Bread

In honor of the Olympics, we’ll be sharing the keys to one of our gold-medal worthy recipes every day until the closing ceremonies on August 12th.
 

When bananas get covered with brownish-black spots, the frugal alternative to pitching them in the trash has always been to mash them up, add them to a quick bread batter, and bake. We’re all for thrift in the kitchen, but we’ve yet to come across a banana bread recipe that actually makes us glad we saved those overripe specimens. We changed that—and still managed to preserve the humble charms of this simple bread—with our moist, tender loaf that actually tastes like bananas.

WHAT MAKES THIS RECIPE A WINNER

• The only way to get better banana flavor was to include more bananas—but the fruit oversaturated the loaf’s cakelike structure. To get the flavor without the moisture, we microwaved the bananas and drained them before working them into our batter.
• For even more fruit flavor, we reduced the exuded liquid and incorporated it into our batter. The concentrated liquid infused the batter with ripe, intensely fruity banana flavor, and the extra moisture helped create a crumb that was tender through and through.
• To put the enticingly crisp, crunchy topping on the cake, we shingled a thinly sliced banana on top and caramelized it.

Want to try it out for yourself? Here’s our recipe for Ultimate Banana Bread for free until August 12.