How to Way Impress Your Neighbors with Your Banana Bread

Here you will find three key ingredients that you must have for exceptional banana bread, plus suggestions for making, keeping, and using the best banana bread. You'll also find impressive things to make banana bread sandwiches and banana bread French toast.

strawberry cream cheese banana bread dessert sandwiches

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The first ingredient, the most important ingredient, that you must have for great banana bread is super ripe bananas. Yellow won't do. They have to be at least blotchy ripe and the best bananas are black. I know, you threw those out three days ago. But the closer to black they are, the more flavor they have.

Let them get so ripe that you're embarrassed to have them in the kitchen and then freeze them. Peel the skin off, put them in a zipper-type plastic bag, and freeze them. Make a habit of never throwing out over-ripe bananas. Freeze them.  They're perfect for cookies, cakes and, of course, banana bread.

The second ingredient is banana flavor. Bananas alone never deliver enough punch. They need help and the help is a teaspoon of banana flavor. Add a teaspoon of flavor to banana bread, cookies, cakes, shakes, and frosting.

And the third ingredient is cinnamon chips. God invented banana trees because he know that someday, we would invent cinnamon chips.  And oh, they make everything banana-y better. (Well, not banana shakes or banana ice cream. Frozen cinnamon chips are not that good.)

There are the three most  important things, the three secret things to great banana bread.

• Check out our Cinnamon Chip Banana Bread Mix. Our banana bread mix has both extra flavor and cinnamon chips.
• You can buy cinnamon chips here. Buy the big bag. You'll find lots of places to use them.
• Get your banana flavor here.  

Suggestions for Great Banana Bread

• Turn the heat down. It takes a long time for the heat to soak through a quick bread. Turn the heat down to 325. You want the interior to set without the exterior getting crusty.
• Check for doneness the right way. Those cracks that open up as the bread bakes, those are steam vents for the moisture to escape. Those are the last places to dry out and bake. That's where you want to stick a toothpick to check for doneness.
• Refrigerate your banana bread. It improves both the texture and the flavor. If you're making sandwiches out of your banana bread, it will hold together better after refrigeration.
• Don't overmix your batter. Mixing develops the gluten in the flour and makes the bread chewy instead of melt-in-your-mouth soft.

Great Things You Can Make With Banana Bread

• Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwiches. You can do that with any quick bread including zucchini bread.

• Flavored Cream Cheese Sandwiches. Shown here are dessert sandwiches made with whipped cream cheese and strawberry jam.

• Ice Cream Sundaes on Banana Bread

• French Toast made with Banana Bread. See how to make banana bread French toast here.
• Put sliced strawberries on servings of banana bread. Better yet, put sliced strawberries on banana bread and then a scoop of strawberry whipped cream. See how to make strawberry whipped cream and others here.
• Put sliced bananas on your banana bread. Better yet, add a scoop of ice cream and then drizzle the whole concoction with chocolate syrup.
• I like chunky peanut butter on banana bread.  In fact, I like salted peanuts in my banana bread.