Thursday, October 19, 2006

Eggless Banana Bread

The girls and I have made this banana bread quite a few times. My 4- and 5-year-olds are able to do much of it themselves, with a little help. The 1-year-old likes to watch and help eat it.

The recipe is from a 1970's Sesame Street Library book, Volume 14.


Big Bird's Banana Bread
Here is what you will need:
3 peeled ripe bananas
3/4 cup honey
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 big bowl
1 big wooden spoon
1 fork
1 bread pan (rub some cooking oil around the inside of it)
1 wire cooling rack
1 measuring cup
1 set of measuring of spoons
##################

Here's what you need a grown up to do:

1. Turn the oven on to 350 degrees.

2. Melt 1/4 cup of butter in a pan.

Here's what you do:

1. Put the peeled bananas in a bowl.

2. Mash up the bananas with the back of a fork.

3. Add the melted butter.

4. Add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, 3/4 cup honey.

5. Stir everything in the bowl with the big spoon. Stir until everything is mixed together.

6. Pour the mix into the oiled bread pan.

7. Bake for 1 hour.

8. After 1 hour, put a toothpick in the bread. Is there some bread on the toothpick when you pull it out? If there is, let the bread cook for a little while longer. If there is no bread on the toothpick when you pull it out, the bread is done! Ask your grown up helper to take the bread out of the oven. They need to take the bread out of the pan and put it on the wire rack.

10. When the bread is cool, cut it up and share it with your neighbors!


The bread is dense, very sweet and a little gooey. It holds together quite well even without eggs, because the bananas and the honey are so sticky.

I used a silicone bread pan, which turned out a beautiful loaf with no need to grease the pan.

The honey we used was orange blossom honey, which gave it a very nice and slightly fruity flavor (and also cuts down on the chances of their being any corn pollen or nectar in the honey).

If you substituted oil for the butter, it could be a completely vegan recipe, and other types of flour could easily be substituted to make it gluten-free.

The girls absolutely love it, and M&M literally cried when it was gone last time. We shared a few slices with the neighbors and ate up the rest within minutes.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very Cool! I was searching for eggless and whole wheat baking. Thanks for sharing this recipe.

knightlyknitter.wordpress.com said...

Thank you for sharing this recipe! I whipped it up as muffins this morning, with a 2:1 wholemeal to plain flour ratio to lighten it a little, and 20mins produced GORGEOUS muffins! I hope you don't mind if I link to this and list my mods - this one is on our family fave list after just one serve!

Anonymous said...

Hi thanks so much for posting this recipe I found it years ago in the Sesame Street Book and used it all the time - I used to know it by heart. I could not find the book -the kids are bigger now, I was so sad about it. I could not find a recipe even close. I thought it had molasses in though??? YOU HAVE TRULY MADE MY DAY!!!! I am putting it in the recipe box right now.

Anonymous said...

I made this all the time as a kid, and now I've found it again. The Internet is amazing.

Anonymous said...

Thanks! Ditto the above comments- we used to make this when I was a kid, and I'm sure the book is in the family library....somewhere!