Top tips to bake in an air fryer and an easy banana bread recipe
If you thought banana bread was hot in 2020, Taste of Home revamped the rules to bake it in an air fryer.
The countertop cooker continues to reign supreme as millions of Americans hone their home cooking skills, so "Good Morning America" enlisted the expertise of Sarah Farmer, executive culinary director of Taste of Home, for her top tips to utilize the appliance for baking.
"We have so many different banana bread recipes in our database that come in from readers and this is your classic banana bread, tweaked to be made in the air fryer," Farmer said. "I think it introduces people to new ways of how to use the air fryer. You can use a cake pan in your air fryer as long as it fits in the basket."
Before you get cooking, Farmer gave some helpful baking basics for the air fryer and how recipes are adjusted to ensure a proper bake.
"It's a box and you have a heating element in the top of it and then above that you've got your fan, so it circulates really, super-hot air around the food, so the food is getting cooked and crisp on all sides," she explained. "We found some great things that actually apply to this recipe; you can toast nuts in the air fryer so quickly."
While you can use a smaller size loaf pan for the banana bread recipe below, depending on the size of your air fryer, Farmer said since "the heat comes from the outside, it's going to take longer for the inside to cook. So putting it in a shallow cake pan was really the way to go with this recipe."
Beyond breads, biscuits or cakes, Farmer said you can also drop cookies in an air fryer and "smaller batches of what you would bake in an oven" adding that they may "get a little browner so you just need to keep an eye on em."
Air Fryer Banana Bread
"Another thing great about this recipe is that you've got all the ingredients for the most part, in your cabinets already, and they're small amounts," she said. "It's just one cup of flour -- we've scaled down on the leaveners -- it's just really eight simple ingredients."
She went on, "You can have nuts or not, so the ingredients are simple, it's easy to put together, it tastes great. It also can be kind of tweaked to be like a banana bread cake or banana cake. So call it a bread, but it's baked in a cake pan so you can kind of dress it up and do other things with it."
Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup mashed ripe banana (about 1 medium)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Directions
Preheat air fryer to 325 degrees. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes. Beat in egg. In another bowl, whisk flour, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with banana, beating well after each addition. Fold in pecans.
Transfer to a greased 8-inch round baking pan that will fit in the air fryer. Cook until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 20-25 minutes. Cover tightly with foil if top gets too dark. Cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing from pan.
Recipe reprinted with permission courtesy of Taste of Home.
The trendy topic and beloved appliance was "the most read" on their site for the entire year, the Taste of Home team shared.
