Desserts · Cakes & loaves

Banana bread

Name: Banana bread
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 55 min
Total time: 70 min
Yield: 10 servings
Ingredients: 3 large overripe bananas, the blacker the better; 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour; 1/2 cup granulated sugar; 5 tbsp butter, melted; 2 eggs egg; 1 tsp baking soda; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 1/4 tsp salt; 1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

The most-searched recipe in America, made properly: black bananas, melted butter, one bowl. It is cake and it scores like cake — we are publishing the real thing rather than a protein version nobody looked for, and letting the number say what it says.

Time: 70 min (15 prep + 55 cook)
Servings: 10
Per serving: 254 kcal
Protein: 5 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

3 large overripe bananas, the blacker the better350 g
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour200 g
1/2 cup granulated sugar100 g
5 tbsp butter, melted75 g
2 eggs egg100 g
1 tsp baking soda5 g
1 tsp vanilla extract5 g
1/4 tsp salt2 g
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)60 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Heat the oven to 175°C (350°F) and line a loaf tin. Mash the bananas properly — lumps stay lumps.
Stir in the melted butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla.
Add the flour, baking soda and salt and fold until the flour just disappears. Stop there; beating it develops gluten and gives you a rubbery loaf.
Fold in the walnuts, pour in, and bake 50–60 minutes until a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool in the tin 10 minutes before turning out.

Should the bananas really be black?

Yes. As they ripen the starch turns to sugar and the flavour concentrates, which is why overripe bananas make a sweeter loaf than fresh ones with the same amount of added sugar.

What does the score mean here?

That a slice of banana bread is a treat rather than a filling food, which everyone already knows. The useful part is the tuner: it shows what more banana and less sugar and butter actually buys you, and what it costs in texture. That trade is a real one, not a lecture.

Alternative

Cottage cheese banana breadthe cottage cheese rebuild27

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

8% of kcal

36% water

6 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

34%

20%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2537 kcal goes into the pot, 897 g of ingredients comes out as ~780 g of food → 325 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 325
Protein: (8%); 6 g
Fat: (41%); 15 g
Carbohydrates: (51%); 42 g
of which sugar: 20 g
Fiber: 2 g
Sodium: 355 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More desserts

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.