I’m relatively new to blogging, so have had only a small taste of what folks are writing about. But I have noticed that banana bread gets a lot of press. Finding recipes for spotted bananas appeals to those who enjoy cooking and/or baking as we love food and are loath to throw it away.

A quick WordPress search for banana bread turned up oodles of recipes. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are blogs out there devoted entirely to this yummy quickbread and all its variations (scones, muffins, cakes, etc). Even in my short blogging life, I’ve written two posts with recipes using overripe bananas.

That said, Delightful Discoveries’ claim of  The Best Banana Bread Ever seemed a bold one. Always looking for an excuse to bake, I felt compelled to give his recipe a whirl. It was a basic banana bread recipe: no stir-ins, no whole wheat flour or other good-for-you grains. Though I prefer whole-grain baked goods, the case can also be made that some foods are best enjoyed in all their white flour, white sugar, egg, and butter glory. (Add sour cream in this case.)

These ingredients absolutely added up to crazy-good banana bread. It was everything this cake-passing-for-health-food should be: tender, sweet, buttery, fragrant. Calling it the definitive “best” would mean making lots of other banana breads and trying them all side-by-side, so we’ll never know. (Though that sounds like a fun project.) But it seemed the perfect loaf–what you’d see under “banana bread” in a dictionary.

My only deviation from the original recipe was to toss in a small package of blackberries that had to be used quickly if I didn’t want to have to toss them. (again, hate to throw out food) It added a fun blast of color and flavor, but the loaf would have been amazing without. It doesn’t need stir-ins or any other addition to shine. It may or not be the “best” (that’s not my call), but I will deem it Perfect.

Perfect Banana Bread à la Delightful Discoveries

with a few blackberries stirred in