The BEST Banana Bread

I’m that person who literally randomly buys bananas just to let them rot so I can have an excuse to turn them into banana bread. It’s always easy and fun to make and should never require any special equipment, which is nice. It’s also probably why banana bread gained popularity during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, like we’ve talked about before, with popular dishes, comes a TON of recipe options. This can be really hard to sift through because any chef or cook you love probably has a banana bread variation — how can you possible know which ones will actually be good? What helps me in situations like this is targeting specific outlets or people I trust and have had positive experiences making their recipes before, and narrowing down from there. As you’ve seen if you’ve been following along, this usually ends up being a battle between NYT Cooking, Bon Appetit, Food52, Smitten Kitchen and Alison Roman.

After making many batches over the years, I’m most impressed with a variation from NYT Cooking.

Erin Jeanne McDowell’s Chocolate Chip Banana Bread via NYT Cooking

What made this recipe stand out among the crowd for me was the ingredients. It required four bananas, which meant this would be dense and moist. It also had melted butter, which I prefer over oil in these types of cakes for flavor and texture. And, it called for Greek yogurt, which you know is my favorite versatile ingredient.