The secret to great homemade banana bread is having a tried and tested go-to. Here I share a classic recipe that I have been using for years. The result: Freshly baked banana bread that is always flavorful and moist with the perfect amount of sweetness!
Do you have recipes to go to that you love and keep making over and over again? For me, this banana bread recipe is one of those recipes. I’ve been making this same banana bread since college! It’s so moist and delicious and it’s definitely one of our family’s favorite.
Watch How To Make Banana Bread
Homemade banana bread that’s flavorful and moist. Just need a few common ingredients to make this amazingly delicious banana bread.
I got this recipe from my best friend that I met in college. She was from Osaka and we met each other at the international students’ orientation when we moved to the US for college. She and her banana bread recipe have been my best friend since then, almost 20 years!
I wasn’t into baking until I met her. She loved making sweets and one day she gave me a few slices of this banana bread. It was very moist and it was different from other banana bread I had before. The texture is soft, with bits of banana and just the perfect amount of sweetness. The store-bought banana bread I’ve tried is usually dry and doesn’t have much real banana flavor.
My friend used a square 8” baking dish to make the bread. The height of the bread is shorter than your typical banana bread but you can slice bread into thicker slices. Simply pick up a slice with your fingers to enjoy a mouthful of this moist banana bread. What I love the most is enjoying it with a cup of great coffee in the morning.
This is one of the rare recipes, in which I measured ingredients with a measuring cup (I didn’t own a kitchen scale in college). Even though it’s not as precise, you will still get a good result. I put the weight measurement below for those of you that use a kitchen scale. I hope you enjoy this banana bread as much as my family does!
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Banana Bread
Video
Ingredients
- ½ Tbsp unsalted butter (for greasing the baking dish)
- 1⅔ cups all-purpose flour (plain flour)
- ½ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ cup unsalted butter (softened)
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 large eggs (50 g each w/o shell) (at room temperature)
- 1 Tbsp neutral oil
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 4 ripe bananas (divided; a 7- to 8-inch, medium-sized banana is roughly 4 oz/113 g with peel; see Notes)
- ½ cup raisins (optional)
Instructions
- Gather all the ingredients.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). For a convection oven, reduce the cooking temperature by 25ºF (15ºC). Grease the bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking dish with ½ Tbsp unsalted butter.
- In a bowl, combine 1⅔ cups all-purpose flour (plain flour), ½ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt, ½ tsp baking soda, and ½ tsp baking powder and whisk all together.
- In another bowl, whisk together ½ cup unsalted butter (softened) and ½ cup sugar until well blended, fluffy, and pale yellow.
- Add 2 large eggs (50 g each w/o shell), 1 Tbsp neutral oil, and 1 tsp pure vanilla extract. Beat with the whisk until well blended.
- Mash 3 ripe bananas with a fork and mix into the egg mixture.
- Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and stir just until blended. Add ½ cup raisins, if you‘d like to include them.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading it evenly with the rubber spatula. Slice 1 ripe banana thinly into rounds and decorate on top of the banana bread.
- Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean, about 1 hour. Remove the baking dish from the oven and let cool for 20 minutes.
To Store
- Wrap each slice or the whole cake with plastic wrap. Store at the cool place and enjoy within 2–3 days.
Notes
Nutrition
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on January 11, 2011.
I love love looove this recipe! It’s one of the best banana bread recipes I tried until now <3
Hi Kazena! Yahoo! We are so happy to hear you love this recipe!
Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe and for your kind feedback.🥰
Hands down the best banana bread I have ever eaten or made! Im very glad I’ve found your website and look forward to trying more recipes! Wow, thank you!
Hi Brittany! Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe and for your kind feedback!
We are so happy to hear you enjoyed Banana Bread! We have many recipes here on our website. Please enjoy!😊
Very yummy! I cut down the sugar to 80g and i find it still sweet to my liking. i may reduce the sugar further. Thanks for the wonderful recipe!
Hi Stephanie! Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe and for sharing your baking experience with us!
We hope you find the perfect amount of sugar for your Banana Bread soon. Happy Baking!😊
Exactly
Thank you for the feedback, Shante!
Hi Naomi, I baked this today. It was dense and look more like nonya Kueh. What could be wrong ? The amount of banana I use was slightly more than the recipe. Is that the reason for the dense texture. Taste wise it is yummy.
Hi Christina, Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe!
The dense texture is from over mixing the dough or due to too much banana. It’s also good to check each ingredient by scale to see if you used too much flour, etc., by using a measuring cup.
We hope this is helpful and your next try will be a better result! Happy Baking!
This was a very delightful banana cake ! Not dense, not too sweet and with a perfect banana flavor!
Thank you !
Hi Emilie, Thank you very much for trying this recipe and for your kind feedback!
We are so happy to hear you enjoyed Banana Bread!
Hello Nami,
I baked this banana bread, and we loved it! This is my favorite banana bread :). Thanks so much for sharing this recipe. ありがとうございます😊。
Hi Gabriela, Thank you very much for trying this recipe and for your kind feedback! We are glad to hear this Banana Bread became your favorite one! ありがとうございます!☺️
How much is each banana in grams without the peel? I would like to be a little more consistent. Or have a range to shoot for. Bananas can vary so much.
Hi Cheryl,
Nami uses 7-8″ long medium-size bananas, roughly 4 oz/113 g with peel per each, as she mentions in her recipe.
We hope this helps!
I agree, the directions for the bananas are very vague. It would make it a lot easier if there was a specific measurement. I only had small bananas so it was hard to adjust. Please come up with a specific measurement for how much total weight of bananas are suggested!
Hi Shay, Thank you for trying Nami’s recipe!
Her banana was roughly 4 oz/113 g with peel/each. So you will need a total of 16 oz/453 g (with peel) bananas.
Use 12 oz/340 g for the batter
and 4 oz/113g for the topping.
We hope this helps!
Hi Nami,
Wanting to do banana bread but realised no baking soda. What can I use to substitute/replace?
Thanks
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer!
In the case, You can use baking powder.
1/4 teaspoon baking soda = 1 teaspoon baking powder. However, baking powder contains a bit of acid, so you might have a more acidic taste.
I hope this helps!😊
Greetings from Asia… I baked it and Love it. Thanks Nami 💓💓
Hi Jennnifer,
My pleasure!
We are so happy to hear that it turned out good and you love it!😊
Hi Nami, thanks for sharing this recipe! I’ve tried my fair share of banana cake recipes but never got good results. But yours is so simple (no mixer! No “egg whites at ribbon stage”! 😂)
I tried yours for the first time today and it tasted great! The sweetness was just perfect and it was moist and soft. I’m just not sure if I got the texture right. Mine was more of a dense cake (It was kinda overbaked at 1hour). Is it suppose to be more chewy like bread? Or dense cake like what I got?
Hi Jas,
Thank you so much for trying this recipe and for your kind feedback. We’re so glad to hear you enjoyed this Banana Bread.
This Banana Bread shouldn’t be chewy so I think you got it right.
However, please note that the baking time may be slightly different for everyone due to the different oven, type of baking dish, and ripeness of the banana. So please bake it until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. (your case may be shorter than 1 hour)
I hope this is helpful!🙂
Many thanks! I’ll try a shorter time the next round.
Another great and easy recipe! I made this 3x already with my 3 year old daughter. She mixed while I measured out ingredients. Very easy and delicious way to use up ripe bananas.
Hi Lori,
We couldn’t be happier to hear how much joy and excitement Nami’s recipe has brought to you and your family!
Thank you very much for trying this recipe and your kind feedback!
Just made this tonight! My 5 yo son is already one his second piece! Been testing out a bunch of banana bread recipes and this one is the winner in my book!
Hi Ha! Thank you for trying this recipe! I’m so glad you like this recipe. Thank you for your kind feedback!
Hi Nami, I love your recipes and have made this a few times, albeit with different results. Sometimes it’s amazing, and sometimes not so much (I probably used too many bananas). I’m from Malaysia and we have a wide variety of bananas so depending on what I have, often have to guesstimate to make up 3 American bananas.
Would you mind measuring your mashed bananas in a cup? Or by weight without the peel? With this, the results should be more consistent. ありがとうございます!
Hi Debra! Thank you for trying this recipe! It happens to me too as sometimes I get a large or small banana (not average medium size) but I try to use my medium size as a standard. So when I buy large bananas, I try to adjust. In the US, an average medium-size banana (7 to 8 inches long) is 4 oz or 113 g with peel. It tends to be slightly bigger probably up to 120 g.
Thank you for your reply Nami-san! I JUST baked this again yesterday as we had way too many bananas from my dad’s farm 🙂 I added dried cranberries in place of the raisins and reduced the sugar by 25% as our bananas are really sweet. とても美味しかった!
Hi Debra! So happy to hear that it came out well! Thanks so much for your feedback again. 嬉しかったです!
Hi Nami! Your baking recipes are all so easy to follow and always turn out very successful. Have been baking chiffon cakes using your recipes. So excited to see this banana bread recipe, can I use brown sugar instead?
Hi Joelle! Thanks so much for trying my chiffon cake recipes. You can use brown sugar but the texture will be slightly different. But you can. 🙂
I have been using your website for years as out of the 30 or so of your recipes I have tried, they have all been great! The extra little adjustments from other Japanese recipes I have seen makes them taste much better.
As almost all restaurants are closed now and I used to spend my time as a keen amateur food critic, I admit to feeling a bit depressed given the lack of variety in my diet. In particular, during extended times working from home, I have had much more time to prepare my food. A highlight of my day is meal time as I try to try one or two new recipes from your site each week.
Looking for some sweet treats to replace my pastries that I would buy outside, I decided to give your banana bread a try. I’m glad I did as it was delicious and was a great daily addition to my afternoon tea.
Thank you for continuing to keep new posts coming as trying your new food brings joy to my otherwise boring day.
Hi Chris! Thank you so much for your kind words. It meant so much to me. I hope you enjoy cooking Japanese food at home, and I’m here to help if you have any questions. 🙂 I totally agree, cooking/eating good food has been a highlight of our life these days, too. We eat well and stay healthy. Take good care, and have fun cooking! 🙂