coffee cake banana bread loaf
Where to even begin? It’s banana bread. It’s coffee cake. It’s banana bread coffee cake. And it’s delicious.
Ingredients
Streusel
56g (4 Tbsp) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
60g (1/2 cup) all purpose flour
110g (1/2 cup) brown sugar, light or dark
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt, or 1/4 tsp regular table salt
Banana Bread
300g-450g (3 medium-large or 4 small) ripe bananas, mashed well
113g (8 Tbsp) unsalted butter, cubed
150g (3/4 cup) granulated sugar
55g (1/4 cup) brown sugar, light or dark
1 1/2 tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt, or 3/4 tsp regular table salt
2 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract
60g (1/4 cup) sour cream
2 eggs
240g (2 cups) all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp espresso powder, such as Modern Mountain espresso powder
Instructions
Make the Streusel
In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Add the cubed cold butter and work with your fingers to combine the butter into the dry ingredients. I like to coat the butter cubes before pressing them between my fingers to flatten them. Keep going until the butter is completely combined and you have a dough that can be pressed into a ball. Pop it in the fridge, loosely covered until it’s time use.
Banana Bread Batter
Preheat the oven to 400 F while preparing the batter.
Mash the bananas well. Any chunks should be very tiny.
Melt the butter and add to the mashed bananas. A bowl-saving hack is to add the butter, cubed, to the bowl of mashed bananas and microwave in 30 second increments until the butter is nearly melted, like the first picture. Stir it until the butter has completely melted. If there are any bits of butter that are still remaining, microwave for another 10 seconds and stir again.
Add the sugars, salt, vanilla, eggs, and sour cream to the butter/banana mixture. Whisk well to make sure it is fully combined. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and espresso powder and gently stir to combine, being careful not to overtax. Once the dry ingredients are incorporated, stop stirring.
Add the sugars, salt, vanilla, eggs, and sour cream to the butter/banana mixture. Whisk well to make sure it is fully combined. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and espresso powder and gently stir to combine, being careful not to over mix. Once the dry ingredients are incorporated, stop stirring.
Pour half of the batter into a parchment lined loaf pan (it must be 9″ x 5″ or 10″ x 5″). Sprinkle half of the streusel over the batter, breaking up clumps with your fingers so it is more of a fine dusting.
Pour the rest of the batter over the streusel, smoothing the top into the corners and sides if needed. Sprinkle the rest of the streusel over the top, keeping the clumps larger.
Bake at 400 F for 10 minutes before dropping the heat to 350 F and baking for an additional 50-60 minutes. Check the banana bread at 50 minutes with a cake tester or toothpick- it should not be wet. Keep baking until the cake tester comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs. Cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before trying to remove it from the pan. Cool on the wire rack a bit more before cutting into it. The banana bread should be warm, not hot.
Notes
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- I have made this banana bread SO MANY times, and my bananas weigh a different amount each time. It’s fine. The bananas can weigh 300g-450g and it works every time. That is a huge amount of difference. Don’t worry about it, just use three medium to large ripe bananas or 4 small ripe bananas.
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- If you don’t have sour cream, you can use buttermilk, whole milk, or full fat Greek yogurt. Sometimes I don’t have enough sour cream, and I use part sour cream and part whole milk.
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- Mise en place’ is a French phrase with the idea of putting everything in its place before beginning to make a recipe. It helps everything to go smoothly and eliminates so much possible stress. Getting all of your supplies and ingredients together beforeever starting the recipe will help tremendously.
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- Weigh your ingredients, particularly the flour. It is the most important measurement in this recipe to weigh. Flour can be off in volume measurements by up to 30g, which is a quarter cup! Having incorrect flour measurements can cause your cookies to spread too much or, alternatively, be dry and crumbly. Weighing your ingredients makes everything so much easier, as you don’t have to wash all the measuring cups at the end. However, I do not use the scale to weigh out teaspoon or tablespoon measurements for things like baking powder, salt, vanilla, or cornstarch, for example.
Find it online: https://linenandgray.com/coffee-cake-banana-bread-loaf/