Simple 6-Ingredient Banana Bread (With Shortening)

This simple banana bread recipe will never give you up, let you down, run around or desert (dessert?) you. It’s super easy to make and even easier to adapt.

With minimal ingredients, this banana bread is so easy to make on busy weeknights and lazy weekend mornings. The shortening makes it super soft and tender, and also makes it "accidentally" dairy free which is great for anyone who is lactose intolerant.

Serve this six ingredient banana bread at brunch with a basket of toasted hazelnut chocolate chip muffins and a cinnamon and walnut fruit salad.

Jump to:

• 🍌 Why I Love This Recipe
• 🧂 Ingredient Notes
• 🥣 Instructions
• 🔪 Preparing the Loaf Pan
• 📖 Variations
• 📋 Why Vegetable Shortening?
• 👩🏻‍🍳 Practical Tips
• 💭 Recipe FAQ
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

🍌 Why I Love This Recipe

Long before I ever made my first batch of bagels, I made this super simple banana bread.

The recipe is originally from a booklet that came with an Oster "Kitchen Center Food Preparation Appliance" my parents got as a wedding gift in 1984 and, while the machine crapped out somewhere around 1991, the banana bread recipe has truly lasted the test of time.

Every now and then I try a different recipe, curious if different ingredients, more ingredients — honey, brown sugar, orange marmalade, bourbon, maple syrup, whole wheat flour, etc. — will produce a superior loaf of banana bread. But this is the banana recipe I always come back to.

A super simple six ingredient banana bread made with shortening.

It's moist and flavorful with a slightly sticky, perfectly cracked-open top, and flecked throughout with evidence of the bananas that make up the batter.

The recipe itself is beautiful in its simplicity: Six ingredients, mixed together in a bowl, then baked for exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes. No more, no less.

If you're a beginner baker, this is an ideal recipe to familiarize yourself with. It's endlessly customizable and incredibly forgiving. Start with those key six ingredients, and from there you can experiment to your hearts content.

🧂 Ingredient Notes

As promised, just 6 ingredients! These are very easy to find in just about any grocery store. See recipe card for quantities.

• Brown bananas - The ideal bananas for banana bread are the ones you bought to eat for breakfast but forgot about on your counter for a week (or more). The bananas should be brown and slightly mushy, but not deeply bruised and definitely not moldy. Some recipes call for you to mash your bananas in advance but I've found that this recipe works best when you just toss whole banana chunks right into your mixer and let the paddle do the hard work of breaking them down. See PRACTICAL TIPS below for how to speed up the browning process.
• All-purpose flour - Nothing fancy! I use King Arthur Baking's Unbleached All-Purpose Flour.
• Sugar - Plain white granulated sugar. You could also swap in brown sugar for a bit more flavor, or use a combination of brown and white sugars. In the interest of simplicity and keeping this at just 6 ingredients, I usually just use white sugar. But brown sugar will work if that's all you've got!
• Eggs - Large eggs, ideally at room temperature. If you use Jumbo or Extra Large eggs, you may find your banana bread is a little tougher or even rubbery in texture. So do keep an eye out for large eggs!
• Shortening - I keep a small container of Crisco in my pantry specifically so I can make banana bread on a whim. Store brand vegetable shortening will also work.
• Baking soda - This is the chemical leavener! It's what makes the banana bread rise.

🥣 Instructions

This banana bread is literally SO SIMPLE TO MAKE. Start by putting all six ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer. You'll want to use the paddle attachment here.

Then mix everything together on medium speed until combined. This should only take about a minute. Maybe a minute and a half.

Scrape down the bowl and scrape off the beater. You just want to make sure there's no sneaky clumps of shortening or banana that haven't been broken up.

Mix again for another 30-40 seconds. That's it! That's literally it. I told you this was simple! If you want to stir in any mix-ins like chocolate chips or chopped nuts, do so now.

HINT: Because this six ingredient banana bread is so simple and the batter is so quick to make, you'll want to make sure your oven is pre-heated and the pan is prepared before you start mixing.

🔪 Preparing the Loaf Pan

In order to successfully remove the bread from the pan after it bakes, you need to grease and flour your pan. Just grease alone won't be enough to keep it from sticking.

Spray the inside and the walls of a 8.5x4.5" (1 lb) or 9x5" (1.25 lb) loaf pan with nonstick spray. Or use a paper towel to spread canola oil in the pan, making sure to get into all the corners.

📖 Variations

There are so many ways you can take this simple banana bread and dress it up to make it your own. Here are some of my favorite things to do with it:

• Chocolate Swirl Banana Bread - After mixing the batter, pour ⅓ of of the batter into a small bowl, add ⅛th cup cocoa powder, and mix well. Pour half of the plain batter into the prepared pan, then dollop in a layer of the chocolate batter, then cover it with the rest of the plain batter. Insert a knife or a skewer straight to the bottom of the pan, and draw a few continuous figure-8 shapes across the width of the pan to create a swirl.
• Nutty Banana Bread - After mixing the batter, stir in ½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans. Top the banana bread with additional chopped nuts before baking.
• Chocolate Chip Banana Bread - After mixing the batter, stir in 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.
• Peanut Butter Banana Bread - Replace ¼ cup shortening with ¼ cup peanut butter.

📋 Why Vegetable Shortening?

Because shortening is 100% fat (unlike butter which is about 80% fat and 16-18% water) it produces very soft, very tender baked goods. Banana bread made with shortening is very soft and very tender and the banana flavor truly shines.

I generally don't think of banana bread as a "buttery" quickbread. So I prefer shortening for the added tenderness and moistness, and because it doesn't add that buttery richness that I expect from cakes.

In the 80s and 90s shortening was popularly promoted as a "healthy alternative to saturated fats." These days it's seen far less often due to an increase in concern about trans fats (just another reminder that what we consider "healthy" is often the result of successful marketing campaigns).

As with just about any ingredient diet culture has championed and/or vilified, shortening does have its place in the kitchen. And it's great for making a super simple, tender quickbread.

This recipe has been so good to me over the years; I have no desire to bend to the whims of diet culture trying to fix something that's not broken. If you'd like a banana bread that doesn't use shortening, there are hundreds of other recipes out there to choose from.

👩🏻‍🍳 Practical Tips

• If you don't have brown bananas and need to make banana bread ASAP, you can brown ripe bananas in the oven. Arrange the bananas on a lined sheet pan and bake at 300F for 30-40 minutes until the skins are browned and the bananas are slightly soft to the touch.
• If your bananas are going brown faster than you're ready to use them, peel and freeze them in a bag until you're ready to use them. Defrost in the fridge overnight. When you defrost bananas, you'll notice there's some excess liquid in the bag which you can discard. While the standard recipe calls for 3 non-frozen bananas, if you're using defrosted bananas, you may want to use 4 bananas to make up for the liquid weight lost in defrosting.
• Don't over mix your batter. It's okay if it's a little bit lumpy.
• To quickly bring eggs to room temperature, submerge them in hot water for 5-10 minutes.

💭 Recipe FAQ

📖 Recipe