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Here’s a healthy, delicious recipe for Banana Bread with a toasty Sesame Seed Crust. Infused with ginger, it’s moist and flavorful. Vegan-adaptable, and can be made with sourdough starter.
What I love about this Banana Bread Recipe
Call me biased, but this is one of the best recipes for Banana Bread I’ve had! What makes this recipe unique is the sesame seed crust, giving the banana bread a delicious texture and toasty flavor. It’s infused with a bit of ginger too!
It’s also vegan- adaptable, using flax eggs. And lastly, you can use your sourdough discard or sourdough starter if you like! So many fun options! And just imagine how good you will feel when you pull this beauty out of the oven. You can thank Tonia for this recipe!
How to Make Banana Bread
It starts with the toasty sesame seed crust!
To make the crust, oil a loaf and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
In a large bowl, mash the ripe banana with a potato masher. You’ll need 1 ¾ cups ( or see notes for using starter).
In the same bowl, whisk the mashed banana with the oil, maple syrup, eggs (or flax eggs) and vanilla. Stir in the spices and salt.
Whisk in the baking soda, and then the flour. Fold in walnuts if you like. You’ll have a thick batter.
I like toasted pecans or walnuts– but do as you please. I know how strongly some of you feel that nuts have no business being in banana bread. 🙂
Pour into the loaf pan.
To create a pretty top, split a banana (less ripe is better here) and sprinkle with brown sugar or coconut sugar. Cut through the peel, then remove the peel.
Bake in a 350F oven for 50-55 minutes, until puffed and golden.
Remove the Banana Bread from the pan, and behold the lovely crust!
Make the Maple Tahini Sauce! It is seriously good- so please don’t skip this!!!
Slice up the banana bread, toast it if you like and drizzle on the sauce.
The Maple Tahini sauce is a revelation. I literally could drink this.
Enjoy the Banana Bread! Tell us what you think and any of your modifications below.
Happy Baking!
More baked things
More recipes you might enjoy!
- Sourdough Pancakes
- Meyer Lemon Loaf Cake with Pistachios
- Maple Pecan Scones
- Sourdough Scones with Lemony Glaze
- Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins with Dried Cherries
Banana Bread with Sesame Seed Crust
- Prep Time: 15
- Cook Time: 55
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
- Yield: 8 1x
- Category: vegan, bread, baked, quick bread
- Method: baked
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
Here’s a healthy, delicious recipe for vegan Banana Bread with a toasty Sesame Seed Crust. Infused with ginger, it’s moist and flavorful. Vegan-adaptable and can be made with sourdough starter.
Ingredients
Loaf Pan Prep: (optional, or sub parchment)
- 1 teaspoon olive oil or use spray oil
- 3–4 tablespoons sesame seeds
Banana Bread:
- 1 3/4 cups (4 bananas) ripe bananas (see notes)
- 1/3 cup olive oil, coconut, grapeseed oil or other )
- 1/2 cup maple syrup
- 2 eggs (or use flax eggs, see notes)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 cup brown sugar or coconut sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger (or use freshly grated ginger, 1 tablespoon)
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon allspice
- 2 cups (250 grams) flour, all-purpose
Optional tasty additions: 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or other nuts), 1 banana (for the top, not too ripe) and brown sugar for sprinkling, 1/2 cup chocolate chips.
Tahini Maple Spread (optional)
- 2 tablespoons Tahini Paste
- 2 tablespoons Coconut Oil, softened but not melted or liquid
- 1 tablespoon Maple Syrup
- pinch of sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Prep Loaf Pan: Oil the sides and bottom of a 9 x 5 loaf pan with a teaspoon of oil. Sprinkle sesame seeds in on top of the oil, and shake pan around so they are coating the bottom and sides fairly evenly. Set pan aside.
- In a large bowl mash the bananas. Add oil, maple syrup, eggs and vanilla and whisk.
- Stir in the salt, baking soda, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, allspice until well blended. Whisk in the flour. Fold in nuts if you like. This will be quite thick.
- Pour into the prepared pan ( see notes for adding whole banana slices to the top) and place on a middle rack in a preheated oven.
- Bake on the middle rack at 350F for 50-55 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in pan for about 20 minutes. Carefully turn out onto a cooling rack.
- Toast slices of day-old banana bread and lavishly spread with Tahini Maple Spread (optional, but heavenly)
Tahini Maple Spread:
- Mix all ingredients together in small bowl until smooth and creamy.
Notes
STARTER: Feel free to use ¾ cup sourdough starter, and reduce the banana by ¾ cup.
Flax Eggs: Mix 2 tablespoons ground flax seed with 6 tablespoons water, and let sit 5 minutes. This makes 2 flax eggs. Use in place of the eggs in this recipe.
TOP: To add sliced banana to the top, cut an unpeeled banana in half lengthwise (not too ripe) remove peel and nestle in the batter. Sprinkle with brown sugar.
Nutrition
- Serving Size:
- Calories: 283
- Sugar: 17.2 g
- Sodium: 245.2 mg
- Fat: 8.7 g
- Saturated Fat: 1.2 g
- Carbohydrates: 48.1 g
- Fiber: 2.5 g
- Protein: 4.6 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
Keywords: Best Banana bread, vegan banana bread, banana bread recipe, sourdough banana bread, vegan banana bread recipe, sourdough discard banana bread
Excellent! So tasty and moist.
★★★★★
Great to hear Tracy!
Spectacular with the sauce!
★★★★★
Awesome Maria!
Absolutely amazing!!!! I skipped the sugar and added milk chocolate chips instead. I didn’t have sesame seeds and even without them the whole thing turned out amazingly! I brought this to my friends house in Charlotte and they loved it!! Thank you!!
★★★★★
So good to hear Angeli!
Absolutely loved this! The sesame crust and ginger made this banana bread out of the ordinary. My husband and I ate almost half the loaf right after it came out of the oven. I chanced it and used plain yogurt instead of the sourdough starter. Seemed ok! And also sprinkled some sesame seeds on top. Fab recipe.
★★★★★
Perfect Elizabeth!
Do you have gluten free options?
Hi, I haven’t tried this, but my guess is a GF flour blend, like Bob’s Red Mill would be fine here!
WOW!!! I have been using the same banana bread recipe for 30 years from an old(beloved) bed & breakfast cookbook, so enticing me to change was big! When I saw your recipe I decided to go for it. AMAZING!!! So flavorful and I can’t believe what a grand difference the seasame seeds make! Adding the banana to top makes it feel like I am a real baker! Thank you SO much for your creative yet approachable recipes. You are the Best!!!
★★★★★
Thanks Aimee, so lovely to hear from you!
The sesame seeds are the wow factor in this recipe! I used real eggs and followed the notes for extra banana in place of sourdough starter. I omitted the sugar and, next time, will decrease the maple syrup, because the extra banana makes this loaf plenty sweet.
★★★★★
Great to hear Herta and thanks for sharing your adaptions!
Sylvia! Great recipe! I’m snowed in so I used what I had.
Subbed egg replacement from flax eggs, black sesame for white, date syrup for maple cuz i only have enough for the tahini sauce, used 5 bananas vs. sds, and added a teaspoon of 5 spice powder in addition to freshly ground allspice & half if your recommendation for cinnamon. So bummed, I forgot the nuts, but with the sesame hopefully that shines through. Didn’t do the toppings since I didn’t have an less ripe banana.
Can’t wait to enjoy it!
★★★★★
So glad you were able to make this work Kathey!
Awesome Heather!
Please consider including weights in your recipes. Many of us vastly prefer weights over volume since it avoids discrepancies in measurements and insures a reproducible product, not to mention produces fewer dishes to wash! The recipe is interesting, but I likely won’t try it without weights (The banana, sourdough starter and brown sugar/coconut sugar are all places for significant volume measurement error).
Hi Mary- If you click on the “M” in the recipe card it should convert it to metric. 🙂
Made this banana bread yesterday. What an amazing and delicious recipe ! Just right on the sweetness and texture. I used ground ginger and instead of adding nuts, I chopped crystallized ginger
( 1/3 to 1/2 c. ) and added to the batter. What a fantastic pop of flavor. I also did the banana on top. So lovely. Did not have tahini so we made a peanut butter and honey spread. Although, it needs almost nothing . Great recipe ! Am enjoying your site and recipes.
★★★★★
We are so happy you enjoyed this Rebecca!
Loved it. Would never have thought to line the time with sesame seeds or the tahini spread. Like all your recipes inventive and delicious. Thank you x
Nice to hear Eilish, so glad you enjoyed!
This turned out great, eventhough I forgot the eggs. Fluffy, moist and with just the right amount of spice.
I love it!
Oh wow, good to know it works without the eggs!
Making sourdough for the first time using your simple sourdough starter. I made this banana bread with the discard from today and WOW! I was a little skeptical with the flavor profile but gave it a shot anyway. My fresh ginger was moldy so I used ginger powder. I used two eggs instead of flax. I topped with the banana halves as directed. It took the full 50 mins for my oven.
For the spread, I threw out my expired tahini a while ago so I subbed in unsweetened sunflower butter. I used unrefined coconut oil because I prefer the coconut flavor. Everything was AMAZING! I can’t get over how delicious it was and how easily it removed from the loaf pan without leaving behind a huge mess or chunks of bread (that often happens to me so I resort to lining it with parchment, but I only used the avocado oil and sesame seeds like the recipe calls for this time).
★★★★★
I love it Taylor! Your adaptations are inspiring, so happy this worked for you!
This is absolutely the best banana bread we’ve ever had! I made the version you make with sourdough discard and gave some to our neighbors/friends. They think so too. Our consensus is also that the Tahini/Maple/Coconut Oil drizzle is not optional at all and you’re right about it being heavenly!
I didn’t have chocolate chips so I crumbled some dark chocolate and sunk the pieces below the top. This made them open the top of the loaf in the same way as scoring sourdough bread does. I sprinkled the top with more sesame seeds, some golden flax seeds and a little flaked sea salt for sparkle 🙂
Thank you again Sylvia and Tonia… So appreciate you!
★★★★★
I love it Monica! You have taken it to a new level! Yummy.
Monica, Love the dark chocolate and sea salt additions!