best.banana.bread…EVER.

Our household, for the last week, has been full of sick people. Feverish, shivering, aching, nauseous sick people on the B.R.A.T.S. diet (bananas-rice-apples-toast-soup). Sick people who could not stomach a food show or read food blogs. Sick people whose dog had sympathetic stomach flu and started barfing alongside them. Sick people who lived almost solely on bananas.

…uh.

Oh. Sorry. Not a great start for a post on a food blog.

But this is all to say that we have a lot of bananas around here. And they’re turning brown, on the road to black. The kitchen is full of their tropical fragrance as they languish and call to us. Eat me! Eat me! Sorry bananas, we’ve had our fill of you.

So what to do with all the bananas? Banana bread, of course. I’ve been collecting banana bread recipes for some time–with a particular eye towards the recipe from Bakesale Betty’s in Oakland. (If you have not been to Bakesale Betty’s and you live in/near Oakland, you are MISSING OUT)! Everything at Bakesale Betty’s is yummy and scrumptuous in a down to earth way.

So I mashed them up and there we went…

The recipe is straightforward–combine all the dry ingredients together…mash and mix all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl and combine. Pour into a loaf pan…sprinkle with a sugar topping and BAKE.

Ideas on future variation: I’m tempted to make a few changes next time around–add a big handful of nuts (pecans or walnuts) and maybe even decrease the sugar and/or honey (the banana loaf, while delicious is a bit on the sweet side with both honey and sugar in the recipe). I’m also wondering if I could make muffins out of this.

Update: YES! I decreased the sugar by a third, kept amount of honey the same, added half a banana…and added nuts! Of course I did not tinker with that perfect sugar topping. You WANT tons of sugar for the topping, trust me. OMG delish. I’ve noted the changes in the recipe below.

I hope you enjoy–we’re chowing down on warm banana bread right now. My husband says it’s the best banana bread he’s ever had in his entire life.

Recipe follows after the jump…

Banana Bread with Cinnamon Crumble Topping
Adapted from Bakesale Betty and Bon Appétit, September 2008

For bread:
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar (I decreased the sugar to 2/3 cup and I liked it even MORE–1 cup makes this bread a tad sweet)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 cup mashed ripe banana (about 3 medium bananas–I like to add 3.5 mashed bananas)
2 large eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup honey
¼ cup water
2/3 cup nuts (optional but YUMMY–I like to use walnuts or pecans)

For topping:
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 ½ Tbsp. packed dark brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Butter and flour a 9- x 5-inch metal loaf pan. (Alternatively, you can spray the pan lightly with cooking spray and then line it with parchment paper, letting the excess hang over the sides which makes it very easy to remove the finished bread from the pan; you just grab the parchment and lift).

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. In a large bowl, whisk together the banana, eggs, oil, honey, and water. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and stir well. (If you are adding nuts, add nuts as a final step). Scrape the batter into the prepared pan.

In a small bowl, mix together the topping ingredients. Sprinkle them evenly over the batter.

Bake the bread until a tester inserted into its center comes out clean, about 1 hour, give or take a little. Cool the bread in the pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Then carefully remove the bread from the pan, taking care not to dislodge the topping. Cool completely before slicing.

Yield: 1 loaf