The streusel topping is from The Pioneer Woman Cooks! If you go to check out her recipe, you’ll see that The Pioneer Woman also knows how to take a darn good looking photo. I cut her recipe in half – and that’s what I have here – but I still found it was just a bit too much streusel, and I didn’t use all of it. However, in retrospect, when I added the streusel to the top of the bread I really could have pushed it down further into the bread mixture and thus added more, OR I could have made a centre “layer” of streusel in the middle of the bread. I regret not doing this extra layer. I have put it as an “optional” step in this recipe, but I really would recommend it. If you do add this middle layer, you may want to reduce the chocolate chips in the bread. Or use cinnamon chips. Or anything else you can think of!

I also modified the streusel recipe by replacing some of the flour with ground up walnuts, and I replaced the pecans with walnuts, just because for a banana bread I think walnuts go better than pecans. The bread was delicious. I used it to make banana bread french toast. (Which was also fantastic.)

Banana Bread with Streusel Topping Recipe

Banana Bread

• 1 stick butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1.5 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup mashed banana (about three medium ones)
• 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2/3 cup chocolate chips

1. Grease a large loaf pan.
2. Cream butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.
3. Add dry ingredients to the wet mixture, then bananas, then nuts and sour cream. Mix until well combined.
4. Add the bread dough/mixture to the loaf pan.
5. Add the streusel topping (see below). Don’t be afraid to push it down a fair bit into the bread, since the recipe here gives you plenty of streusel.
6. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour.

Optional Middle Layer: When adding the bread mixture to the loaf pan, only pour in half at first, then add some of the streusel topping to this first half of the mixture, not quite letting the streusel reach to the edges of the pan. Now pour the other half of the bread mixture on top of this, and then finally the rest of the streusel.

Streusel Topping Recipe

• 1/2 stick butter (1/4 cup) (melted)
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 5 tbsp white sugar
• 6 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup walnuts, ch0pped
• 1/4 cup walnuts, ground up

1. Combine all the dry ingredients. Melt the butter.
2. Add the butter a little at a time to the dry ingredients, mixing it in each time until small clumps form.
3. Add the streusel to the top of the banana bread in the pan (or to the centre, too) as per above. Using a fork, mix up the very top of the banana bread with the streusel, just so that not all the streusel falls off loose when the bread is done.

I still haven’t discovered anything worth putting on a good banana bread. Butter, peanut butter, Nutella–all of these fail to improve upon that which is perfect. Although I have found that Banana Bread is a good bread for French Toast, even if it is a quick bread without all that fancy yeast. I’ve seen others do this online, but when I mentioned it to people in real life they thought I was just weird. So be it.

I like my banana bread with tons of walnuts and chocolate chips. Some people prefer it with none of these extra ingredients. These people are crazy, but that’s okay, because these people don’t get any walnuts and chocolate chips.

In the ingredients here I’ll go with 1/2 cup each of walnuts and chocolate chips for the bread. I like to use more (and in the pictures here, certainly, there are more), but I’ll stick to what most people I think would enjoy. It’s also what was on the original recipe I had, at some point. But I forget where it is from, and I forget what I modified. However, this banana bread recipe is moist, delicious, and awesome. And it can pretty easily be doubled or tripled.

I’ll also note that every banana bread recipe I read always says, “the riper the bananas, the better.” I guess it releases sugars or some such thing. Anyways, I don’t ever plan ahead enough to have three ripe bananas, so I buy bananas as ripe as I can find them, and then leave them in a bag for a few hours, which helps a bit. People also freeze them, but then they’re hard to mash up, so I generally don’t do that.

Banana Bread with Walnuts and Chocolate Chips

Ingredients

• 3 medium bananas (the riper the better)
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1.5 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup walnuts

1. Butter/grease/spray with Pam a 9″ loaf pan. I also like to add a long strip of parchment paper across the center and long sides of the pan so that you can lift the entire loaf using the paper when it’s done.

2. Mash up the bananas. Beat in with butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla.

3. Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; add this to the wet mixture. Throw in the chocolate chips and walnuts.

4. Pour mixture into loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the banana bread comes out clean.