Peanut Butter Banana Bread

This peanut butter banana bread contains twice as much peanut butter as any recipe I’ve ever seen. If you’re skeptical, I don’t blame you! Introducing that much peanut butter into any old recipe would typically result in a dense, greasy texture. But this isn’t any old recipe. I formulated this one to have both a perfect texture and a ton of peanut butter. It’s moist, springy, and fluffy, just like any good banana bread should be.

If you’re ready to bake, jump to the recipe. If you want to learn more about how I pulled this off, read on.

What makes this peanut butter banana bread the best? Math!

Oh, math. I know it’s not the sexiest way to describe a recipe, but it is what makes this recipe the best. Hear me out:

Peanut butter is surprisingly subtle once it’s baked into a loaf of banana bread. Making sure that it comes through is hard enough already. But most recipes throw an additional obstacle in their own path: adding butter or oil to the mix.

Why are oil and butter the enemy of a good peanut butter banana bread? Well, banana bread can only hold a certain amount of fat before it gets greasy and dense. Think of this sort of like a “fat budget.” If we add more than the amount we’re allotted, we will break the bank.

In a regular banana bread recipe, it’s fine to use oil or butter as our fat. These fats are mostly there for structure, not flavor. But in a peanut butter banana bread, adding oil or butter is a total waste of our fat budget. After all, peanut butter is mostly fat. So for every bit of oil or butter we add, we have to add less peanut butter. And that would be a bummer.

Here’s a quick summary of my solution to this problem:

• My standard banana bread recipe calls for 105g of oil. Since peanut butter is a bit over 50% fat, I went with 220g of peanut butter in its place.
• Those 220g of peanut butter also bring in about 40-50 g of carbs, which will dry out the loaf if I don’t do some accounting. I pulled 40g of flour from my usual 200g to compensate.

Sounds good in theory, and… it worked great in the kitchen! It yielded a super moist loaf with a very nice peanut butter flavor. Even with all that peanut butter, this loaf is on the subtle side. The peanut butter is certainly present (and very tasty), but it doesn’t hit you over the head, and it’s not like eating a Reese’s cup or something. And that is why I would never waste a gram of our precious fat budget on oil.

Veganizing it:

This recipe is halfway to vegan, since it contains no butter or other dairy products. It does contain 2 eggs, but those are easy enough to substitute. While I have not tried this specific banana bread recipe with a vegan egg substitute, I feel very confident it would work with either a flax/chia egg or store-bought vegan egg substitute. Here is my go-to chia egg recipe I use when making vegan banana bread:

2 chia eggs:

• 1/3 cup [80g] soy milk
• 2 tsp [10g] olive oil
• 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp [15g] chia seeds (1 Tbsp for blending, 1 tsp for mixing in)

Combine the soy milk, olive oil, and 1 Tbsp chia seeds in a high-power blender. Blend on high until it turns gray and thickens. If you do not have a high-power blender, blend them with whatever you have, letting them sit halfway through to soak for about 10 minutes before blending fully. Mix in the final tsp of chia seeds in at the end. Use this whole amount in place of both of the eggs in this recipe. And don’t forget to make sure your chocolate chips are vegan too.

If you’re looking for something even easier, try my eggless banana bread recipe, which uses nothing more than a bit more flour and a bit more banana. I don’t recommend making that tweak to this particular recipe, since that requires a bit more finesse than a simple swap. But the eggless recipe itself is great, and I recommend it if you’re looking for an easy vegan banana bread.

If you’re looking for more banana breads, it’s become a bit of a specialty of mine. Check out my whole collection of banana bread recipes (some fun, some problem-solve-y).

Also, just a note that I shot these photos while staying in an Airbnb in Chicago during a tornado warning where the sky turned completely black for 2 hours in the middle of the day. 🫠 They’re a bit rough, but I hope it goes to show that even without beautiful lighting (and even when I’m so anxious that I accidentally slice the loaf on a super weird angle, lol that hero shot is so wonky), you can’t go wrong with peanut butter banana bread. I was certainly happy to get to enjoy a slice while googling the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning.

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