Chrissy Teigen’s Twitter Famous Banana Bread

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a recipe is not upfront with all the necessary steps you might want to consider before starting. We were devastated when we first attempted to make the KitchenAid Strawberry Ice Cream because we had our fresh strawberries, cream and pasteurized eggs from the store and we were ready to go! Only to realize that to actually make ice cream you needed to freeze the bowl for 12 hours before, duh. So here’s what you’ll want to know before making this banana bread.

HERE IS WHAT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW BEFORE STARTING:

The recipe below is meant for a bundt pan, which I prefer because it ends up being moister but I have made this in a loaf pan, and I recently even made it in cupcake tins to cut down the batch. If you want to half the recipe, I recommend using cupcake tins as it makes roughly about 12 cupcakes.

ALSO, you do not need to have ripe bananas for this, we can turn your regular bananas into banana bread ready bananas with just an extra 20-30 minutes! More on that below.

You might be familiar with this recipe, maybe you were like me and watched the whole thing go down on Twitter. If you didn’t, go Google it. The tldr; is that she needed 6 very ripe bananas to work on this recipe, but as you know you can not just buy overly ripe bananas at the store, so she went to Twitter and called on her followers. She had to trade: one of her signed cookbooks, a pair of John Legend’s underwear, and a makeup palette to make this recipe happen. Now, this recipe, while straight out of Chrissy Teigan’s cookbook, has a reduced sugar level by half a cup, and honestly, it didn’t make a difference at all so why the heck not.

MAKE YOUR BANANAS RIPE IN 30 MIN

As I mentioned before, while banana bread is a great way to use up too-mushy-to-eat bananas, if you are hankering for banana bread but your bananas haven’t caught up to match your craving, that’s okay! A quick hack is to lay down a silicone mat or some parchment paper on a rimmed baking sheet, place your bananas down with the peels still on and bake at 300˚ for 20-30 minutes depending on how ripe your bananas are – you’ll know they’re done when the peels have turned black. It’s okay if they ooze out of the bananas a little too. I recommend doing this a little ahead of time if you can to allow your bananas to cool a bit before starting to work them into this recipe.

The last thing I am going to say is that the whole reason we started making banana bread was that back when we were still traveling, we took a trip to Maui and did the Road to Hana; a beautiful scenic drive around the island that is known for its views but also its legendary banana bread. We tried stand after stand and came home with high banana bread standards that we knew were going to be difficult to find. After making many different recipes, we came across this one and I am telling you, the coconut and vanilla pudding MAKE THIS! It’s so good that I can’t imagine trying to top it, and thus, we just wanted to highlight someone else’s recipe because it is the banana bread to end all banana breads. If you make it, let me know if you agree or if you’ve found better anywhere!

1. Preheat the over to 325˚
2. In a large bowl take your ripe bananas, eggs and oil and mash them together.
3. In another bowl, combine the flour, sugar, pudding, baking soda and salt and mix thoroughly before adding it in slowly to the wet mix. Mix again gently until fully incorporated. I’ve done it both by hand and on a low standing mixer setting – do not over mix!
4. Fold in the chocolate and shredded coconut.
5. Grease and flour your bundt pan – lightly grease with a little oil on a paper towel then lightly dust with flour, rotate your pan to coat with the excess flour, then tip it upside down and tap out the excess flour. It’s important to have every inch floured to ensure you can release it from the pan when done. I’ve made this recipe in a loaf pan as well as cupcakes tins, bundt pans are my favorite because I feel like they are moister. 
6. Bake for 55-60 minutes for bundt or loaf pans. For cupcake tins, bake for 20 minutes. The timing is much shorter for cupcakes because they are less thick and don’t require as much time to cook through. Don’t forget to always poke with a toothpick though as cook times can vary by oven – always be sure your toothpick runs clean! 
7. Let it cool for 10 minutes and then with a knife, loosen the cake from the edge of the pan. Using a plate, place it on top of the pan, then flip it over to release it.
8. Let cool again then serve! I’ve recently been introduced to banana bread with salted butter and I will say, while this recipe is delicious without, it should come as no surprise that it’s even better with butter. 
9. NOM!

Half batch in a cupcake tin: