🥜 What Makes This Recipe So Good
I’m going to say something controversial, but please, hear me out. …I hate bananas. I KNOW, I KNOW. My team thinks I’m weird, too, but I just don’t like them! I especially don’t like artificially-banana-flavored anything, like Laffy Taffy or Runts. THAT BEING SAID! There are a few recipes-with-bananas that I genuinely do love, and this peanut butter banana toast is one of them! Maybe it’s the simplicity. Maybe it’s that the peanut butter offsets the bananas in just the right way, so they don’t overpower everything. Or maybe it’s the way the honey, cinnamon, and sea salt play up the natural sweetness of the banana. Whatever it is about this one, I’m sold. It’s a fantastic option for busy mornings or quick snacks because it takes practically no time and even less effort to make. Technically I put 5 minutes of prep time and 5 minutes of cook time on the recipe card, but I’d be surprised if your peanut butter banana toast isn’t toasted, assembled, and eaten within that 10-minute window.
👩🏼‍🍳 Chef’s Tips
Toast your bread as little or as much as you like! Anything goes here, from barely warm to charred and crispy. You can even switch things up and use frozen waffles instead of bread. Want peanut butter banana toast in the next day or two but not confident your bananas will be ready? Put them in a paper bag! Yup. Throw in an apple or an avocado if you’ve got one and fold the bag closed. The ethylene released by the bananas will stay in the bag, making them ripen faster. Depending on their starting point, the bananas should become usably ripe overnight. Another way to ripen bananas in a flash is to throw them in the oven. Place each individual banana on a baking sheet. Pop the baking sheet into an oven preheated to 200° Fahrenheit for 5 minutes, then check the bananas. You want them just barely warm, NOT warm or hot, and just slightly softer than when you put them in the oven. Let them cool then slice them up and use them for peanut butter banana toast. I recommend using a peanut butter made from only peanuts and maybe a little salt. Did you know that the FDA only requires something to be 90% peanuts in order to be labelled “peanut butter”? The other 10% can be any kind of sweeteners, salt, and hydrogenated oils. There’s just no need for that, really, because peanuts make a delicious peanut butter all on their own! If you want to make your own peanut butter, all you need are dry-roasted peanuts, a food processor, and maybe some salt if you want it. Process the peanuts until they release their natural oils, then keep going until the mixture is smooth and creamy and totally combined.
🍳 Breakfast Recipes to Jump Start Your Day!
Shrimp and Grits Frozen Waffles in the Air Fryer Air Fryer Frozen Hash Brown Patties Crockpot Breakfast Casserole Country Omelette 4-Ingredient Banana Bread Whole30 Breakfast Tacos Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Pancakes Protein Oatmeal (3 Ways!) Mom’s Favorite Cheesy Scrambled Eggs Fried Egg Sandwich with Cheese and Bacon
Fried peanut butter banana sandwiches at The Arcade. A bananas foster sundae with peanut butter sauce on top of a Krispy Kreme donut at Marlowe’s Ribs & Restaurant. A peanut butter and banana porter from Beale St. Brewing. Carousel Cakes’ Oprah-approved Memphis Drizzle Cake, with banana custard and peanut butter buttercream.
That’s just to name a very few! So what’s our deal with PB&B?It all goes back to Elvis. He was famous for… well, several things. One of the quirkier claims-to-fame was his love for sandwiches made from toast, peanut butter, banana, and sometimes bacon.You’ll find a ton of variations all claiming to be the version he craved regularly – fried, not fried, toasted, not toasted, with jelly, without jelly, with bacon, without bacon, mashed bananas, caramelized bananas, etc., etc.The specifics are up for debate, but pretty much everyone agrees on two things – peanut butter and bananas. Of course, Memphis was home to Elvis for several decades, so the peanut-butter-banana combo has become as quintessentially Memphis as BBQ, blues, and the Grizzlies.
