Mom's Famous Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why did my banana bread flop? ›

Some people do not preheat their oven long enough.

It can take 15 minutes to properly preheat some ovens. If your oven has not reached the correct baking temperature before the banana bread is placed in the oven, the banana bread will be undercooked and more likely to sink.

Check your oven to make sure it really is showing the correct temperature that you set it for and another thing is to make sure you only add in the amount of mashed up bananas that the recipe calls for. Sounds like you are not measuring properly to many bananas will make it gummy.

The tldr; is that she needed 6 very ripe bananas to work on this recipe, but as you know you can not just buy overly ripe bananas at the store, so she went to Twitter and called on her followers.

Using too much banana could make your bread heavy and damp in the center, causing it to appear undercooked and unappealing. If you have bananas leftover, you can always freeze them for later use.

You may not have followed the recipe correctly. For example, you may have added too much liquid, or you may not have added enough of some dry ingredient, and therefore your dough may have had too much moisture.

Let it cool for 10 minutes — this helps the loaf solidify and makes it easier to remove from the pan. Remove from pan and cool another 10 minutes. Grasping the parchment paper sling, lift the loaf out of the pan and place on the cooling rack. Cool for another 10 minutes before slicing.

If so, I would dump out all the flour, remeasure and then add in the correct amount, subtracting a little bit (say a half teaspoon) for the flour you couldn't remove that stuck to the other ingredients. Was it before you baked it?

Not measuring the flour correctly

If you use too much flour, you'll end up with really dry banana bread, and If you don't use enough flour, your banana bread will be way too wet. The secret lies in how you measure the flour. The scoop out of the bag method could be packing way too much flour.

Thankfully, the banana bread batter is forgiving, and it's not too hard to fine-tune it. If your batter's a bit too thick, add a tablespoon or two of milk to thin it out. A too-thin batter can be remedied by sprinkling in a tablespoon of whole wheat flour (a great way to add some extra fiber!) and gently mixing it in.

Banana bread recipes typically ask you to use overripe bananas so that they're easier to mush. This means it's tempting to toss all your bananas into the mix when you're ready to bake, to avoid food waste. But if you add too much of the fruit into your batter, your bread could turn out mushy, heavy, and wet.

Can bananas be too far gone for banana bread? ›

While it's okay if the banana peel is dark brown or even black, if the inside is too, then the fruit is beyond ripe and now on its way to rotten. Another sign that bananas have gone bad is if they start leaking any fluids. When in doubt, just toss the bananas out.

While there's no blanket rule, sticking to one to two bananas per day shouldn't cause issues for most people. With that said, remember that they are relatively high in carbohydrates, so eating them along with protein or fat is also advisable to support stable energy levels.

Push a toothpick into the loaf near the center then pull it out. It should not have any wet batter or crumbs sticking to it. As previously suggested, you could cook it at a lower temperature for a longer time. Or you could try a different baking pan.

The usual remedy for something both burned and undercooked is lower heat, longer cooking time - it lets the temperature equalize a bit more, so it cooks more evenly. You might try 300F for your usual 1:20 cooking time, and see if it doesn't burn and/or needs more time.

In the oven, the outside begins to cook much faster than the inside; the crack is from the inner batter rising and releasing steam through the semi-cooked outer batter.

You can keep the surface more even by using a spoon or spatula to push some of the batter to the sides of the pan, instead of leaving the top level. As the cake rises, the center will come up level with the edges. Because you put a baking soda and/or baking powder in it.

Baking temperature

Some ovens run hotter than its settings, some cooler. If the oven is too hot the loaf will be brown and crispy on the outside but doughy in the middle and may collapse as it cools. When bread is baked at too low a temperature it will not rise enough in the oven resulting in a dense and sunken loaf.