Celebs: They’re just like us! Except that when we ask our neighbors to borrow a cup of sugar to make chocolate chip cookies, we don’t break the internet. That’s exactly what happened when, last September, Chrissy Teigen tweeted a desperate request for six brown bananas. You know what that means: she was whipping up a loaf of her famous banana bread.
Thanks to the recent release of her new cookbook, Cravings: Hungry for More, we can all try Chrissy Teigen’s delicious dessert. Turn to p. 236 and grease up a Bundt pan, or live vicariously through me as I test the recipe for myself.
How to Make Chrissy Teigen’s Banana Bread
Ingredients
- 2 cups mashed very ripe bananas
- 4 eggs
- 2⁄3 cups canola oil, plus a little more to grease the pan
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little more for dusting the pan
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 (3.5-ounce) box vanilla instant pudding mix
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1½ teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- 1 (3.5-ounce) bar dark chocolate, chopped into chunks
- Salted butter, for serving
About the Ingredients
I picked up the cookbook and a few ripe bananas and headed home, assuming I had all the necessary ingredients for classic banana bread in my pantry. Until I looked at the recipe. Instant pudding mix? Coconut? A bar of chocolate instead of chocolate chips? I was a little skeptical about the coconut—banana bread is one of those things I don’t think you should mess with too much. But I was determined to make the recipe just like Chrissy Teigen intended it, so back to the store I went.
Ready, set, bake
One thing I love about making banana bread is how simple it is. And this recipe is no different. I mashed the wet ingredients together, then folded in the dry ones, including the coconut and chopped chocolate.
Pro Tip: Your bananas need to be very brown and very ripe. Otherwise, they won’t mash well and you’ll end up with chunks.
Then I poured the batter in the Bundt pan—yes, a Bundt pan!—set that baby in the oven and waited… and waited. Chrissy recommends baking it for an hour at 325°, but mine took an extra 15 minutes to really firm up.
The final result
Before we even talk about the gorgeous golden creation that came out of the oven, be aware that your entire kitchen will smell like the inside of a bakery. (Definitely not complaining.) And if you’re wondering if the bread tastes as good as it looks, the answer is a resounding yes.
The unsweetened coconut and dark chocolate balance out the sugar and the bananas, for a bite that’s deliciously moist and just the right amount of sweet. All in all, I’d say the title of Chrissy Teigen’s new cookbook is very accurate: This banana bread definitely left me “hungry for more.”
Want to see another celeb’s most famous recipe? Whip up the biscuits that took Joanna Gaines a year to perfect.
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