Sour Cream Banana Bread

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Here’s my take on banana bread. Please note: this is not your healthy, same as eating a bowl of oatmeal recipe banana bread, but it is oh so good! This is quarantine banana bread. We need some butter and happiness in our lives right now. It’s soft, and fluffy, and indulgent. SO YAAAAMMY.

This recipe is great for using up sour cream (or yogurt) you have in your fridge, as well as the obvious- those overripe bananas hanging out on your counter.

You can have this banana bread for breakfast or a snack or… dinner? There are no rules, you can have banana bread and ~~wine~~ a grape smoothie for dinner if you want!

Bananas

I always like mashing the bananas. My mom would let me mash them for banana bread when I was a smol cook. I have vivid memories of aggressively mashing the bananas with a fork while sitting on the counter in our kitchen. So satisfying and such a good stress relief activity – is this why banana bread is so popular in quarantine life? That and the shelf life of bananas is 1.4 days.

Either way, I’ve been making lots of banana bread. If you want a soul-warming, rich, buttery banana bread, this is the one for you. Here’s the recipe.

It starts like… a cookie recipe.

Butter. Sugar. Eggs.

Are we making cookies or banana bread? Being the ultimate lazy sloth, I used to just throw everything in the bowl together and mix and hope for the best. With some other recipes, I still do that… sometimes… but for recipes with the butter + sugar + eggs trifecta, it’s best to whip them good first, before flour and other dry ingredients. Here’s some science on why. Whipping some air into that mixture adds some lightness and fluff before we add heavy ingredients like flour – that’s going to translate to airy, soft, banana bread (or cookies. or cake). This is basically cookie banana bread. Banana bread cake. It’s worth doing it in steps.

Now the eggs – one at a time. Whip some more. Nice and fluffy. That’s it.

Add your dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, and salt – and HOLD UP we’re done with the crazy whipping – now just gently mix. Combine it all together, and then add your vanilla, sour cream, and mashed bananas.

Fold in your walnuts (if you’re into that kind of thing) and pour this beautiful rich batter – that you just want to eat with a spoon – into a greased bread pan. You can do it in a regular size bread pan, you can make cute little mini loaves, or you can do muffins! Bake and wait by the oven impatiently.

Mmmm your house now smells amazing! Get ready to feast. Slice it up, and because you love yourself, put a little pat of butter on it. Warm, fluffy, rich, and banana-y. So good with a cup (or ten) of coffee!

Why does banana bread taste so good? It’s those dang overripe bananas. They go from green, to barely ripe, to totally brown in what seems like minutes.

It IS important to use very very ripe or overripe bananas for bread though. I’ve tried to make it with bananas not ripe enough and it AIN’T GOOD, FRIENDS. Just wait a few days and make it then. Or use your sloth shortcut freezer bananas.

Either way, we need those ripe bananas. What is happening to the bananas as they ripen?

Sloth Science:

Bananas (and other fruits) have a lot of starch. Starch is a big, giant, monster molecule. It’s made up of a bunch of molecules that look like sugar, but all linked together a million zillion times (that’s the scientific term). As fruit ripens, there is a chemical reaction of starch to sugar. The giant starch molecule gets chopped up, producing little units of sugar, YUM!

As fruit ripens over time, it also produces ethylene gas. If something is producing a lot of ethylene gas, it can also affect other fruits and vegetables sitting nearby. If you have ever had a bunch of really brown bananas sitting near a newer bunch of greener ones and BAM they all of a sudden are all overripe and need your attention immediately (freeze them!) … this is why.

Or, sometimes I use this to my advantage, and put a stubborn avocado near some brown bananas that I’m trying to will to ripen faster so I can have it ready for Taco Tuesday.

Controlling the ethylene is also how these containers work – they have a filter in them that absorbs the ethylene gas, making your fruits and veggies last longer. I love these!

So there’s your sloth science minute on bananas. If you want to super nerd out more on banana science, here’s a cool article.

Sloth Shortcut:

To make sure I always have bananas on hand that I can use when this banana bread is calling to me, I freeze overripe bananas if I’m not ready to make banana bread yet. I don’t know why I’m not always ready to make banana bread- maybe I was busy. Maybe I just had SO MANY bananas. I used to just throw the bananas, peel and all, into the freezer. Then, every 6 months when I would clean out my freezer, I would throw away So. Many. Bananas. I’m just not good at using them when I have to either a) try to peel the skin off it while it’s frozen, or b) wait for it to thaw and EW peel it then. No thank youuuu.

Now I take the little bit of time to peel and freeze them in a zip lock bag. They’re also really easy to mash up in the bag like this. Also- nice to have ready to throw into smoothies! Maybe everyone else was already doing this and it just took me forever to realize this… but an extra 30 seconds now helps me actually use these bananas from the freezer.

Happy baking!

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