There is a particular kind of quiet that settles into a kitchen on a Sunday morning, and this recipe was born in exactly that quiet. Three ingredients. One bowl. No mixer required. It is the kind of banana bread you make when the bananas have gone a little too spotted to eat and you don't want to waste them.
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A little bit about this recipe
I first made a version of this loaf in my grandmother's kitchen, on a stovetop older than I am, using a wooden spoon that has since been retired to a drawer of spoons that are too sentimental to use and too sentimental to throw away. It is not a complicated recipe. It does not need to be.
Before we go further — and I promise, we are so close to the recipe — I want to tell you about the day I discovered browning bananas at room temperature versus the refrigerator. It changed the way I think about fruit. It changed the way I think about time itself.
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Anyway. Where was I. Right — the bananas. My grandmother always said a banana isn't ready until it looks like it's given up on life, and honestly, that has become something of a personal philosophy for me as well, in baking and otherwise.
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The story of the spoon
I mentioned the wooden spoon earlier, and I think it deserves its own section, because it really is central to how this recipe came to be in the first place, and also because my editor tells me that longer posts perform better in search, and I would like this recipe to be found by as many people as possible, because I believe, sincerely, that everyone deserves good banana bread.
My grandmother bought that spoon at a hardware store that no longer exists, in a town that has since been absorbed into a larger town, on a trip that I am told involved a flat tire, a thunderstorm, and a diner that served, by her account, the worst coffee she'd ever had and would ever have again.
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Okay. The ingredients. Finally.
THREE. THAT'S IT. THREE INGREDIENTS. Ripe bananas, self-rising flour, sweetened condensed milk. That's the whole recipe. I know it's taken us a while to get here. I know. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. This website has bills.
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Grandma Cheryl's 3-Ingredient Banana Bread
Makes one loaf · 10 minutes prep · 55 minutes bake
You need:
- 3 very ripe (spotty/black) bananas, mashed
- 1½ cups self-rising flour
- 1 can (14oz / 396g) sweetened condensed milk
Do this:
- Heat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a loaf pan.
- Mash the bananas in a bowl until mostly smooth.
- Stir in the condensed milk, then fold in the flour just until combined — don't overmix.
- Pour into the pan. Bake 50–60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a rack. Slice once it's fully cool.