If you want your banana bread to stand out, then you need to give it a little extra. Enter banana bread with pineapples. It’s a recipe with all the comforting, familiar flavors of traditional banana bread, but punched up with bright pineapple notes and a more tender crumb. Bake these loaves, give some hunks to your friends and wait for a cook’s most sought-after compliment: “Can you send me the recipe?”
Ingredients for Banana Pineapple Bread
- All-purpose flour: We love using all-purpose flour for quick bread recipes. It’s not as dense as bread flour, but not as delicate as cake flour.
- Sugar: Sugar sweetens this quick bread, making it an anytime treat.
- Baking soda: Baking soda helps this bread rise.
- Cinnamon: Experiment with different types of cinnamon. You may be used to the common cassia, but floral Ceylon, spicy Saigon and bold Korintje cinnamon could all bring their own unique personalities to this pineapple banana bread.
- Eggs: Be sure to bake with room temperature eggs. When cold eggs come into contact with a room-temperature fat, the fat seizes up and poorly affects your bread’s texture.
- Vanilla extract: A hint of vanilla builds in a layer of flavor.
- Pineapple: Make sure you’re buying crushed pineapple, not tidbits or chunks. Don’t forget to drain the juice before adding the crushed pineapple to the batter.
- Bananas: You’ll need about four to five very ripe bananas for this recipe. Ripe bananas are sweeter and easier to mash up.
Directions
Step 1: Combine the dry ingredients
Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and cinnamon.
Step 2: Whisk together the wet ingredients
In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil and vanilla. Whisk in the pineapple and bananas.
Step 3: Create the batter
Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until the dry is just moistened.
Pour the batter into two greased 9×5-inch loaf pans.
Editor’s Tip: Don’t overmix the dry and wet ingredients. You could overdevelop the gluten, creating dense and tough loaves. Instead, whisk everything together just until combined–maybe even a little lumpy!
Step 4: Bake
Bake the pineapple banana bread until a toothpick comes out clean, 60 to 65 minutes. Cool the loaves in their pans at room temperature for 10 minutes. Remove the loaves from the pans and transfer them to wire racks to cool.
Recipe Variations
- Add in coconut: Use coconut extract instead of vanilla extract, or simply sprinkle in some sweetened, shredded coconut into the batter.
- Try other extracts: Besides vanilla or coconut, almond or rum extracts could add some extra tropical vibes to this recipe.
- Sprinkle in nuts: Walnuts are our nut of choice for this recipe, but macadamia nuts, almonds or pecans are also knockout options.
How to Store Banana Pineapple Bread
To store, cool the banana pineapple bread loaves to room temperature. Then, either place the loaves in airtight containers or wrap them individually in storage wrap. The bread can be kept at room temperature for up to 24 hours. After that, move it to the fridge for up to three days.
How to Freeze Banana Pineapple Bread
To freeze banana pineapple bread, first allow the loaves to cool completely to room temperature. Place the loaves into airtight containers or wrap them tightly in two layers of storage wrap followed by a final layer of aluminum foil. Keep the loaves in the freezer for up to three months. To thaw, place the banana pineapple bread in the fridge overnight or at room temperature for two hours.
Banana Pineapple Bread Tips
How can I ripen bananas quickly for banana pineapple bread?
There are different ways to quickly ripening bananas, from a few days to a few minutes to even to a few seconds (thank you, microwave!). Ripen the bananas in a day or two by folding them up into a brown paper bag and letting that natural ethylene gas do its thing.
If you need the bananas ripened in 15 minutes, preheat your oven to 250º, place your unpeeled bananas on a baking sheet, and bake until the skins have turned brown and the flesh is soft when you stick a fork in the banana.
Give the microwave a go by piercing the bananas all over with a fork or toothpick, putting the bananas on a plate in the microwave and nooking them in 30 second bursts until the flesh is soft.
What other pans can I bake this banana pineapple bread in?
You can bake this recipe in two muffins tins, resulting in about 24 muffins. However, keep in mind they won’t have a muffin-like texture, they will still resemble the loaf’s texture. This banana pineapple bread recipe can also be baked into six 5-3/4×3-inch mini loaf pans. Perfect for passing out loaves to friends and family! In general, keep in mind that both muffin and mini loaf sizes won’t need as long to bake as the regular loaf size.
