Lately, I’ve been obsessively trying to perfect my recipe for lokma (AKA Turkish delights). I might post it someday soon, but that’s all beside the point, because this post is not about the high-maintenance, fast-paced, high-stress world of candy making. This is a post about the lowest maintenance sweet of all time: banana bread! Or more specifically, pistachio banana bread.
Jump to the recipe if you’re ready to bake, or read on to learn about the secret ingredient I love to add to banana bread. And don’t miss my recipe for olive oil banana bread if you’re looking for a dairy-free alternative.
My secret ingredient for the best banana bread
It’s a bit of an obscure ingredient if you don’t do a lot of Middle Eastern baking, but my secret to the best banana bread is a little splash of orange blossom water.
Don’t worry though—you don’t have to use orange blossom water if you don’t have it on hand.
If you don’t use orange blossom water, this recipe makes an excellent loaf of pistachio banana bread. But if you do include a bit of orange blossom water, you’re in for an absolute treat. Here’s why:
What is orange blossom water?
If you haven’t tried orange blossom water, it tastes just like it sounds: it’s reminiscent of oranges, but with a definitively floral bouquet. It’s like if some really fancy cosmetic line made a subtly orange-scented perfume (rather than one that screams “generic orange-scented dishwasher detergent!!”).
In other words, orange blossom water makes plain old orange juice, orange slices, and orange peel extract seem astringent, bland, and brassy.
And why is it so good in banana bread?
There is something kind of ripe-banana-adjacent about the scent of orange blossom water. I’m not sure exactly what that’s all about, but it works incredibly well in banana desserts. It heightens the flavor of bananas by marrying them with a floral citrus-scented infusion.
I don’t stop at banana bread—I add orange blossom water to banana cream pie, banana pudding, and banoffee everything.
By the way, don’t miss my other banana bread recipes if you’re looking for something a little different:
- Olive oil banana bread
- Double chocolate banana bread
- All my favorite loaf cakes! (including banana bread)
Pistachio Banana Bread
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour and 15 minutes
- Yield: 1 medium loaf
Ingredients
- 1 cup [240 g] mashed banana from 3 very overripe bananas *
- 3 Tbsp [45 g] melted unsalted butter**
- 1/4 cup [55 g] olive oil**
- 2 room temperature eggs
- Flavorings (optional) ***
- 1 cup [200 g] sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 cups [230 g] sifted flour (about 1 3/4 cups unsifted)
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 cup [60 g] chopped raw pistachios
- 1 1/2 Tbsp [15g] coarsely ground pistachios (for the top) ****
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F [177° C].
- Butter a 8 x 4 inch [20 x 10 cm] loaf pan. *****
- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the mashed bananas together with the melted butter and olive oil until very well combined. Add the eggs, orange blossom water (if using), sugar, and salt, and whisk together until the whole thing is completely incorporated.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and baking powder, and then pour in the chopped pistachios.
- Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and stir to combine. Do not over-mix (stop mixing as soon as there are no large lumps).
- Spoon the mixture into the loaf pan.
- Sprinkle the top with the ground pistachios.
- Bake for about 1 hour. Start checking for doneness after about 50 minutes, by inserting a toothpick or wooden skewer into the center of the loaf. If it comes out with batter, it needs more time, but if it comes out with just some crumbs, it’s ready to take out.
- Remove from the pan and cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes before cutting and serving.
Notes
* I used to suggest optionally using up to 1 1/4 cup [300 g] banana, but the recipe works much better with just 1 cup. I’m just including this note for anyone who used to make it with the larger amount when it was an option. (Note from 26 August 2025)
** Feel free to use a total of 1 cup [105 g] olive oil in place of the butter + oil.
*** For example, 2 teaspoons orange blossom water. Feel free to add more orange blossom water, if you’d like. 1 tablespoon will be a bit more heightened, and if you like when things to taste like perfume, you can even add 2 tablespoons. But that is the absolute maximum.
**** The pistachios that are mixed into the loaf should simply be chopped, but the ones sprinkled on top should be ground (in other words, very finely chopped). I like to simply use the crumbs left behind from chopping the pistachios for this. But the only reason is because it looks prettier this way, so don’t sweat it.
***** Feel free to instead use a 9×5″ loaf pan if you’re very worried about spillage. But if you follow the recipe carefully, the batter should be viscous enough that it won’t overflow, but will instead puff up into a beautiful, tall loaf as it bakes. If you use a 9×5 loaf, check it for doneness about 5 to 10 minutes earlier. If your pan isn’t nonstick (or is very scratched-up nonstick), make a parchment sling for easy removal (butter the pan, place the sling, and add more butter to the parchment). Simply trace a butter knife around the bare sides and lift it out with the parchment flaps.
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This turned out perfectly! The rise on the bread is beautiful.
Yay I am so glad to hear that!! 😀
This recipe turned out perfectly!
aw yay, thank you Rebecca!! 😀
Hi, I want to make this recipe dairy free. How would you replace the butter?
Oh great question! Feel free to replace the 3 tablespoons butter with 2 more tablespoons olive oil.
Has anybody used roasted and salted pistachios? I don’t have raw
While I do prefer raw here, you can absolutely experiment with using roasted and salted, especially if you tend to like sweet and savory desserts. I would cut back slightly on the amount of salt in the batter (by just a pinch or so). And I’d skip sprinkling roasted pistachios on top of the banana bread, otherwise they will end up too toasted by the time the loaf bakes through. Raw walnuts also work really wonderfully here, if you’d rather use those. Hope you enjoy, whatever you end up trying!
I made this last night with 3/4 cup sugar (I tend to prefer things a little less sweet than many people so reduce sugar in most recipes by default) and swapped plain low-fat yogurt for the olive oil. This banana bread is so lovely! I am off work today and it is taking a great deal of willpower not to just devour the whole loaf!
Ooh wow, that sounds so much healthier!! I’ve gotta try those substitutions sometime! I’m glad you enjoyed it, and hope you had a nice day off! 🙂
This is a fantastic recipe. I made it as written. The flavors of pistachio and oange blossom work surprisingly well with banana.
For those of you who are curious about making this gluten free, I also tried a version using 1 cup almond meal, 1 cup gluten free flour blend (Bob’s Red Mill), and an extra 1/2 tsp baking powder. The result was truly fantastic. It rose every bit as dramatically as the wheat flour version and was chewy and moist, not crumbly. Highly recommend!
Aw I’m so glad you enjoyed it! 😀
And thank you so much for sharing your gluten free adaptation. Bob’s Red Mill 1-for-1 is truly miraculous, and I love that you added a bit of extra baking powder (the only downside is how dense gluten free blends sometimes bake up. Perfect compromise!)
Great recipe! I just turned down the sugar a notch (3/4 cup), and it was perfect!
Oh that’s awesome! I need to try it with less sugar myself so I can add that super helpful note to the recipe—I love the idea, thank you so much for sharing it!
Made it without a hitch. Turned out delicious! Thank you.
Woohoo! That’s so awesome, and you’re so welcome!! 😀
Looks good, maybe I’ll make it for my Bible study girls this Tuesday. By the way, that took some tenacity making 15 batches of loukom. I think I gave up
After 3 tries. 😬
Thanks Hilda, hope you and your friends enjoy it! 😄❤️ Haha, you totally understand the loukom struggle—I definitely wanted to give up a few times (and normally would have, but I became totally obsessed with figuring it out).
Would this work with almond flour or oatmeal flour? Trying to stay away from bleached white flour, when possible.
That’s a great question Bev! I’ve never made this particular loaf with gluten free/alternative flours, so I can’t say for sure, but I’ve done a lot of gluten free baking for friends, so I have some advice. The flavors of almond flour and oatmeal flour would work great here, but unfortunately they don’t mimic the effect of gluten very well; they tend to make things really crumbly. But because this recipe has eggs and bananas (which will both help it set up), you might get away with using almond flour or oatmeal flour, especially if you don’t mind some crumbliness. If you try it, I’d love to hear how it goes!