My classic banana bread recipe is now even better with perfect looking swirls of Nutella on top (and on the inside)..this Banana Bread can easily fail all your other tea favorites. Try it today!
I want to confess something. I ate this Nutella Swirl Banana Bread…ALL of it…on my own..I did not share..and I don’t regret it!! Now it may not sound alarming to you but consider this…whenever I bake something I offer it to my family, if friends are around I share some with them and when I still have some left I take it to work. I eat everything I make but rarely do I eat all of it. This Nutella Swirl Banana Bread is something else, once you try it you wouldn’t wanna share it too! The strong banana flavour that comes from my overripe bananas, the swirls of Nutella that run through my bread and the fantastic looking not-too-brown-but-still-brown top everything tastes fabulous together. I don’t think there’s anything that comes close to banana breads in terms of taste and this one with Nutella is going to be the best one you’ll ever taste.
The secret to this Nutella Swirl Banana Bread and just about any banana bread is – OVERRIPE BANANAS. I cannot stress this enough. Make sure the bananas that you use are extremely spotty and are a few days old. Fresh bananas aren’t as sweet and they don’t give a strong enough flavour, you don’t want to be using them. Also, make sure you puree the bananas since there’s no liquid in the recipe (except the egg). You can keep the puree a little bit chunky if you prefer to have a few pieces in your bread.
Because the batter is so wet and the sole liquid is the banana puree it takes longer to bake. I bake my banana bread for 45-50 minutes, however, I cover it with foil halfway through to avoid heavy browning on the top. If you can, try an use a light colored tin to bake the bread to avoid browning it from the bottom.
Once your main batter is done, you get onto the fancy bit! The Swirls!!! Making the swirls is troubling for a lot of people, I get a lot of messages where people ask me how I did them. The fact is they’re super easy to make, yes you need to understand the trick ones, but after that you can get onto making just about anything with swirls….be it my Red Velvet Chocolate Swirl Brownies, or Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies or Chocolate Swirl Banana Muffins. You can make it all!
- • Flour (maida), 250 grams
- • Baking Powder, 1 teaspoon
- • Salt, ½ teaspoon
- • Butter, 100 grams
- • Sugar, 100 grams
- • Egg, 1 (or 4 tablespoons yogurt)
- • Overripe Bananas, 3 (Puree the bananas by simply blending them in a food processor)
- • Milk, 2-3 tablespoons (optional- use only if the batter looks a little too thick)
- • Vanilla Essence, 1 teaspoon
- • Nutella, 8-10 teaspoons
- Grease a 9"x5" loaf tin and set aside.
- In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt and keep aside to be used later.
- In a separate bowl, whisk butter until light and fluffy, about 4-5 minutes. Add in the sugar (can be a mix of white and dark brown). Whisk again until they're properly incorporated.
- Add in the egg and whisk again, lightly this time. Make sure you don't incorporate too much air into it or the bread will sink in the centre after it's done baking.
- Add in the banana puree. Make sure the puree isn't too chunky. Followed by milk and vanilla essence.
- Preheat the oven at 180 degrees for 5 minutes while you make the swirls.
- For the swirls: Divide your batter into 3 equal parts. Pour one part into your greased loaf pan and drop spoonfuls of Nutella onto it. Now run a skewer/toothpick through it. Run the skewer in any direction, just randomly until you have received your desired pattern.
- Top this with the 2nd part and repeat again. Finally, pour the remaining batter on top and make the swirls on top. Make sure you make these look good, the ones on the bottom layer are not going to show, this will.
- Bake the bread for 45 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. When the first 15 minutes are up, take out your loaf pan and cover it with foil. This is done to avoid heavy browning.
- Once your Nutella Swirl Banana Bread is done, insert a skewer in the centre to check for doneness. If the skewer comes out clean it's done and you can transfer the bread to a wire rack carefully after 5 minutes. Otherwise, bake for 5 more minutes and check again.
Love banana breads? Try these recipes next…
Chocolate Chip Banana Pancakes
Chocolate and Banana Muffins
Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins (Sugar Free)
Nutella and Banana Crepes
The Best- Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
Chocolate Swirl Banana Muffins
Another winner!!!
Thank you Elaine!!
I saw this in my reader and thought “this has to be Radhika’s recipe.” Sure enough it was! I love your stuff and can always tell. Plus I know you love banana and nutella like me, so yeah!
Hahaha! Thank you Kloe for being so nice ! 🙂 How are you doing?
And I’m so glad we share the love of Nutella and banana breads
The Banana Nutella bread looks AMAZING! I’m going to try it!
Hi Lindsay! Thank you so so much! Let me know when you do
I love how you give the alternate to eggs in your recipes…this looks amazing too.
Hi Ranjani! Thank you! Hope you give it a try
Your banana bread looks super moist and so delicious! But I think you forgot to write down when to incorporate the flour, salt and baking powder mixture into the egg, sugar and butter mixture? Does the flour come in before or after the addition of the bananas?
Hi Nenie!
Thanks for pointing that out. The flour goes in after the bananas. 🙂
This looks amazingly moist and delicious. I bet your friends and family are happy people! Nutella is such an awesome addition to banana bread (which I make all the time, I’ve added chocolate chips but never Nutella before). Great photos, I love the fact that you show the texture of the food… so drool-worthy! x
Thank you SO much Laura! Your comments are making me so happy! Thanks a whole lot 🙂
This looked amazing, so I had to try it. There is definitely a flaw in this recipe. The “batter” is unbelievably HARD. It becomes very difficult to work with. Even after adding nearly half a cup of milk, the bread came out super hard & dry, almost a choking hazard. This recipe needs to be re-worked. Great concept – unfortunately, the recipe does not follow.
Hi Susan,
Thanks for your feedback. I’m actually surprised because I’ve made it way too many times and it turns soft and moist each time. If you had troubles with this batter why dont you try my chocolate swirl banana muffins at http://sugarnspicebyradhika.in/2014/06/07/chocolate-swirl-banana-muffins/ and let me know if you still face this problem.
Try again, maybe it was just a bad day 🙂
i am visiting your blog for the first time. spotted you on insta. i have to say, you are another nigelle … showing these techniques with such precision .. m impressed .. y havent u thought of video blogging
Hi Radhika,
My bread although tasted fine but looked white instead of yellow.could you tell me what could be the reason ?
Radhikaa dii when i first saw this receipe i was quite young but wanted to try it out.. today i did and it did wonderss! Much lovexx
Hi Anusha! This makes me sooo happy! So glad to have loyal readers like you!
Hi Radhika, this recipe looks super yummy and wanted to try it fr my 1yr old boy.. wanted to ask you if we cn use wheat flour instead of maida.. and coz what flour ll take much more water fr kèeping it moist so thn is der NY change we need to do to keep the wheatfliue bread moist and safe
Hi Pri, if you want to make this whole wheat, I suggest you start with half whole wheat and half all purpose flour.
Whole wheat flour on its own will be tricky to handle so start here and gradually build up the ratio.