Pan de Banana

This is not your mom’s banana bread (unless she is Salvadoran). It’s banana bread the way it’s baked and eaten in the tropics, deliciously moist and light.

This recipe was invented by my mother. In El Salvador, it’s very typical to make bread pudding with leftover bread and lots of bananas. My mother had the idea to try to achieve the same flavor without having to wait for bread to get stale. She mixed and measured and ended up with this – it’s a moist, sweet bread that brings out the best banana flavors.

When my mother made it, she didn’t put bananas on top. One day, I was helping her in the kitchen and accidentally dropped some of the banana that was meant to be in the batter on top of dough she had already poured in a mold. She scolded me (I was eight and probably too clumsy to be helping) but we baked it anyway. The banana caramelized to a deep golden brown and even though my mother preferred hers plain, I decided then and there to always put bananas on top of my banana bread.