What Happens If You Add Too Many Bananas To Banana Bread

It's happened to all of us. We buy a hand full of bananas with the intention of eating them before they go bad, only to be left with a ton of overly ripe bananas a week later. So what do we do? Make banana bread, of course. 

If you're new to banana bread-making and have five or six overly ripe bananas, but your banana bread recipe calls for only three, you might think adding a couple more to avoid wasting is fine. Or, maybe you just really like those brown banana bits and want to add more for extra flavor and consistency.

Unfortunately, this isn't always the case with bananas (per Allrecipes). If you add more bananas than the recipe calls for, you could be left with a loaf that you probably won't want to eat or serve to anyone else. However, you could also get exactly what you wanted — a more flavorful, still edible loaf (via Insider). It ultimately depends on a couple of variables.

The experts at Allrecipes list excessive bananas as a common banana bread-making blunder, claiming it could make the bread feel a bit more hefty and moist in the middle. So instead of nice, airy, light bread, you might end up with mushy, dense bread that seems undercooked. On the other hand, an Insider article about how common baking mistakes can change your banana bread provides a different perspective on the "mistake."

The author, Rachel Askinasi, made several loaves of banana bread and intentionally made a specific error for each loaf to let readers know the outcome. As for the number of bananas, she used one extra banana than the recipe called for. The result? "The more bananas you use, the more moist and flavorful your loaf will be," she said.

While it's unclear what size bananas she used, they likely weren't large since she claimed the banana flavor ended up well-balanced with the other ingredients. "The flavors of true banana were evenly distributed throughout the loaf," she added. Therefore, the loaf was also heavier than the one-banana loaves, as Allrecipes noted.

As Askinasi proved, using only one extra banana won't necessarily ruin the loaf. On the contrary, it could make it more moist and flavorful. However, using too many can ruin it. But how many is "too many?" That depends on the size of the bananas and the recipe since not all recipes call for the same ingredient amounts.