Crockpot Recipes: Banana Bread

The lesson this week is definitely if at first you don’t succeed, try…try again!

This week’s recipe was a learning experience for sure! I had to try making banana bread in the crockpot after I discovered it could be done. It worked…for the most part. Lucky for you, I can pass on my missteps, so that hopefully you don’t make the same ones. (You can make your own!)

After doing some research, it doesn’t seem that there is any difference between a quick-bread made in the oven and a quick bread made in the crockpot. Recipe speaking. The thing that is different between quick-breads and regular yeast bread is the amount of sugar in them. And what does sugar do when you heat it up enough, kids?? It burns. Don’t stop reading yet! I have analyzed the problem, and I have an easy solution. This is why I love cooking! You get to figure out why things don’t work, fix them, and make them into something amazing.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
2 eggs
1 cup of sugar
2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
3 ripe bananas
1 cup chopped walnuts, optional

Cream together the butter, eggs, and sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Slowly mix the dry ingredients with the butter mixture. Mash the bananas with a fork and add them. Mix in the chopped walnuts. I always use a mini food processor to chopped up nuts.

Cook on high in a SMALL crockpot for about 3 hours. If you have a large crockpot like the one below, I would recommend putting the batter in a small pan, then putting that pan in the crockpot and cooking on high for about 3 hours. If you try to cook bread that is too thick, IT WILL BURN on the outside. Also, leave you lid off a little bit so that moisture doesn’t build up inside or your bread will be soggy.

Here is what the finished batter looked like in my crockpot…

…everything seemed fine until about 2 hours in when the outside started to burn. I finally ended up dumping it out into a pan and finishing it in the oven. It tasted wonderful! I think it was just too thick for the heat to reach the middle in this large crockpot.

Finally, the finished product…