Peanut Butter Honey Banana Bread

Again, I am sick.

But I’m working on it. I’m planning to 1) remember to take tissues with me so I don’t have to wipe my runny nose on crumpled receipts, which already happened twice this week 2) finally buying a portable hand sanitizer and washing my hands when I get to the office and 3) attempting to eat more citrus.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s the 2nd time for me in less than 1 month! So instead of doing anything grand this 3-day weekend, I’m staying home, watching Downton Abbey, and sleeping with the aid of NyQuil.A couple of weeks back, I won a lovely bottle of homemade vanilla from the talented blogger, Ashlae, over at Oh Ladycakes. Ashlae’s vanilla is legit, on sale only 2 times per year, and out of stock almost instantly. I won by promising to make banana bread and reminiscing about the little detail from Eleanor and Park, in which Eleanor’s mom uses vanilla extract as perfume.Banana bread is one of my all-time favorite comfort foods. Over the last week, I baked 4 loaves of banana bread, 3 to celebrate the launching of this book at work (check out late author Susan O’Malley’s thoughts on banana bread here), and 1 to experiment with the flavors inspired by Elvis’s favorite sandwich: peanut butter & banana.

In high school, I almost always brought a Peanut Butter Honey sandwich, and sometimes, a fresh banana to slice up and add to the mix. Note: It is never good to pack something with sliced banana hours in advance- ALWAYS eat sliced banana fresh.

I thought it would be fun to add a couple layers of PBH to my favorite recipe of banana bread, which I’ve adapted from this recipe for zucchini bread (which is actually, also really good as zucchini bread!). 

The result is a moist loaf of honey-soaked banana bread with a rich ribbon of squishy, roasted peanut butter. It’s delicious, a little bit decadent, but amazing. We didn’t even share this loaf. In fact, I barely shared with Jon. I had piece after piece by myself and all of a sudden, we were out.

Peanut Butter Honey Banana Bread

January 17, 2016

by Megan

Category Uncategorized

Ingredients

• 2 overripe bananas, mashed into as small chunks as possible
• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup of white granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup of light brown packed sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. cloves
• 3 tbsp honey
• 1/3 cup of smooth peanut butter

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a large bowl with the mashed bananas, combine oil, egg, sugars, and vanilla extract and stir until smooth.
3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
4. In a small bowl, stir together honey and peanut butter until well mixed. Add the peanut butter mix into a piping bag, or a sandwich bag with the corner cut off.
5. Prepare a loaf pan by lining with parchment paper.
6. Add the dry ingredients into the banana wet ingredients and stir with big strokes, until just combined. The mixture will be lumpy, but you shouldn't see any flour if possible.
7. Pour about 1/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the loaf pan.
8. Pipe half of the peanut butter and honey mix over the batter, spreading across the entire top of the batter.
9. Pour another 1/3 of the batter over the peanut butter.
10. Repeat piping until peanut butter is all used up.
11. Cover peanut butter layer with the remainder of the batter.
12. Using a butter knife, swirl the peanut butter and batter together in the pan in a figure 8.
13. Bake for 45 minutes. Check to see if the bread is finished by inserting a toothpick or knife. If it comes out clean of batter, it is finished. It took me about an hour of baking total for the bread to cook, but you should check every 5-10 minutes after 45 minutes have passed.
14. Allow to cool before taking the loaf out of the pan and unwrapping.
15. Enjoy!