Let’s start by admitting that there are only a few other blisses besides banana bread. Banana bread is the most comforting food in the world and is the ideal breakfast, dessert, snack… everything, basically.

Banana bread is believed to have roots in the United States during the early 1900s, likely born out of necessity. According to food experts and historians, during financial hardships, they were trying to find a creative way to use overripe bananas before they went bad. Also, during that time, there was a massive rise in baking powder, which was a game-changer for baking bread-type food faster and easier than traditional yeast.

Since then, banana bread has become one of the most popular since it combines an easy and affordable way not to waste food, aka your bananas that are sitting on the counter.

I have always liked bananas, but when you live alone, there is a significant chance that you won’t be able to eat them before they go bad. Frankly, I find it horrible to waste food -and money- that often. So, I Googled something like “What can I do with ripe bananas before they get bad?” and, apart from smoothie recipes, I found a couple of interesting banana bread recipes. I tried them all until I started experimenting with one specific recipe. 

Basically, I love the idea of banana bread, but most of the recipes treat it as a dessert with lots of butter and sugar, and this is something I specifically avoid. I would never say no to cakes, candies, etc., but first of all, my skin is sugar-intolerant, which causes me extreme breakouts, and second of all, I avoid sugar at breakfast.

So, I discovered the perfect recipe: banana bread with olive oil, not a lot of sugar, but equally delicious and moist.

I “played” a bit with the recipe, and here we are—time to share it while waiting for mine to get out of the oven!

The Ingredients

I usually get frustrated when I have to precisely count ingredients for this reason, in this recipe, when we talk about “cup,” I mean a normal-sized coffee mug, like in the picture below.

- 3-4 ripe bananas (the more ripe they are, the sweeter)

- ½ cup olive oil

- ½ cup brown sugar (you can omit or reduce the quantity)

- 2 large eggs

- 2 cups all-purpose flour (you may need a tad more; add at the end if needed)

- 1 teaspoon baking soda

- ½ teaspoon baking powder

- ½ teaspoon salt

- 2 ½ tablespoons milk (I use whole, but any other type of milk works fine!)

- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

- 1 cup of dark chocolate chips

How to make the best banana bread

This is the easy part. This recipe, apart from delicious, it’s so easy to make that you won’t need more than 10 minutes to mix the ingredients and put the cake in the oven.

- Preheat the oven to 356 degrees F (180 degrees C)

- In a big bowl, mash the bananas with a fork so that you have a nice consistency. We don’t need it wholly mashed; it’s very ok if we have some little pieces of the banana. 

- Mix all the ingredients with a spatula until you have a smooth batter. This is the time to add or not more flour. You want the batter to be smooth but not too watery. 

- Spray olive oil and flour to your preferred pan and pour the batter. 

- Cover the pan with aluminum foil, and bake for 30 minutes.

- Remove the foil and bake for 30 minutes more.

- Remove from the oven, cover the pan with a towel and let it sit for at least half hour. 

Enjoy your perfect banana bread! It’s the perfect breakfast if you accompany your slice with berries or a fulfilling snack!

The original recipe can be found here, but it’s in Greek for whoever is interested!