Baking

Banana Walnut Bread

Name: Banana Walnut Bread
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 55 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 10 slices
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 3 ripe bananas, mashed; 100 g butter, melted; 150 g (3/4 cup) brown sugar; 2 eggs; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 250 g (1 2/3 cups) plain flour; 1 tsp baking soda; 1/2 tsp salt; 80 g (3/4 cup) walnuts, chopped

Serves 10 slices Prep 15 mins Cook 55 mins Total 1 hour 10 mins

This banana walnut bread recipe is written for Aussie home kitchens — american leaning, supermarket ingredients, and timings that match a real weeknight rather than a studio set. As written it serves 10 slices. Budget about 15 mins to prep and 55 mins to cook or bake, roughly 1 hour 10 mins all up, across 9 ingredients and 4 method steps. Key building blocks: ripe bananas, butter and brown sugar. If you need a substitute, change one thing at a time and expect the texture notes below to matter more than the timer. Use it for weekend baking sessions and school-lunch tin fillers, then cool on a rack, then slice or pack once firm. One tray or tin as written — freeze extras in airtight bags. Metric spoons here mean a 20 ml tablespoon and a 5 ml teaspoon. We write baking recipes so you can cook from your phone on the bench: large checkable ingredients, numbered steps, and notes you can skim while the pan heats.

Ingredients

3 ripe bananas, mashed
100 g butter, melted
150 g (3/4 cup) brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
250 g (1 2/3 cups) plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
80 g (3/4 cup) walnuts, chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease a loaf tin.
Mix bananas, butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla.
Fold in flour, baking soda and salt, then walnuts.
Pour into tin and bake 50–55 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Tip: Very ripe bananas with brown spots give the best flavour.

Notes

Shopping and mise en place: read the full ingredient list once before you start. For Banana Walnut Bread, ripe bananas and butter are the items that decide whether the dish tastes flat or properly seasoned. Weigh where grams are given — volume cups are fine for liquids and some dry goods, but baking ratios are tighter if you use scales. Australian cups are 250 ml; a tablespoon is 20 ml and a teaspoon is 5 ml.
Before the heat goes on, line up ripe bananas, butter and brown sugar and anything perishable from the list. Soften butter, bring eggs off the fridge if the method needs them room-temp, and preheat so you are not waiting mid-recipe. For a baking cook of this size (10 slices), a clear bench saves more time than any gadget.
From our tested tip, expanded: Very ripe bananas with brown spots give the best flavour. Treat that as the non-negotiable. If something still feels off — too wet, too pale, too tight — adjust one variable at a time (heat, liquid, or bake time) rather than changing three things at once.
Putting it together for Banana Walnut Bread: work clean, taste as you go, and do not rush browning or reduction steps if they appear in the method. If you are cooking for mixed diets, plate sauces and toppings separately where practical. Keep this page bookmarked if it becomes a household regular — we update wording when cooks report a confusing step. Metric consistency across Scoops & Dishes means once you trust the cups and scales here, breakfast through dessert behaves the same way.