Martha’s One-Ingredient Upgrade for Banana Bread Makes Hers the Best

The most important ingredient in banana bread is the bananas, right? Not necessarily. Of course, over-ripe bananas are a necessity when making great banana bread, but there is one ingredient Martha uses and that we now reach for time and time again to turn a basic banana bread recipe into something truly special. 

Banana bread is typically made with staple ingredients like flour, sugar, butter, and eggs, but it often needs a little something extra to take it over the top. According to Martha, that secret ingredient is sour cream. She’s been adding it to her go-to banana bread recipe since before publishing her first book, Entertaining, which features the now-classic version. Discover how sour cream enhances banana bread’s texture and flavor—and why this simple upgrade is worth trying.

Why Sour Cream Makes a Difference

Sour cream is an ingredient found in pretty much every grocery store. We use it all the time to dollop over baked potatoes, add to mashed potatoes, or stir into sauces to make them rich and creamy. But perhaps the best way to utilize the thick, smooth dairy product is in baked goods, especially banana bread. Its power is twofold—sour cream impacts the overall flavor and texture of the loaf.

• Moisture: The first thing that sour cream brings is moisture, with the help of the sugar and eggs. It also has texture and body, which adds richness to the batter. You don’t need a lot, since banana bread is already quite moist, but even just a little bit helps the loaf a lot. 
• Flavor: Unlike many other dairy products that add moisture, sour cream is, well, sour. It has a tangy bite that can only be rivaled by buttermilk, another common ingredient in banana bread. However, where sour cream wins over buttermilk is that it also has a much richer and silkier texture. Its slight sour flavor is ideal for baked goods because it helps balance out the sweetness. 

Sour cream's powers extend beyond banana bread. It does the same thing for all kinds of other baked goods, adding an instant boost of flavor and moisture for coffee cake, blueberry muffins, biscuits, and even cheesecake and pancakes.

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How to Add Sour Cream to Banana Bread

If you're using Martha's recipe, the work is already done for you. If you want to add sour cream to another favorite banana bread recipe, there are two different methods to try:

Swapping the sour cream for another ingredient: Substitute the sour cream for the same amount of another dairy product that the recipe calls for, whether it's whole milk, buttermilk, or crème fraîche. Note: You can also take this approach with other similar baked goods, such as quick breads, muffins, and cakes.

Substituting part of the fat and bananas: Banana bread recipes use either melted butter or oil for the fat. Reduce the amount of fat and bananas each by one-quarter and replace them with an equal weight of sour cream. When adding sour cream to a banana bread recipe that didn't originally call for it, we recommend whisking the sour cream in with the other wet ingredients before adding that mixture to the dry ingredients.