Banana Bread with Walnut Coffee Crumble

The bananas at my house are regularly thrown into the garbage. We buy them, we forget about them, they start to turn a hideous brown color, then we remember their presence and quickly discard them into the trash. It makes me sad to waste so much food all of the time so I decided that it was time to make a change... and that change came in the form of Banana bread! 

Banana bread is by far the best way to use up uneaten and overripe bananas. It makes the perfect breakfast with a nice cup of coffee and is great because the bananas keep the bread so moist. I even burned mine a little and it tasted as if nothing had gone awry at all - that's the beauty of it all. And P.S., another way to save your bananas from the dumps is to freeze them. If you know you won't be eating them, just slice them and put them in your freezer for quick smoothies!

Banana Bread with Walnut Coffee Crumble

Yields: 1 loaf, serves 8 - 10

modified from Over the Hill and On a Roll

For the cake:

3 - 4 ripe bananas, mashed with a fork

1/3 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg + 1 extra yolk

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups of flour

For the crumble:

1/2 cup walnuts, plus extra

2 tbsn. brown sugar

2 tbsn. flour

2 tbsn. cold butter

1 tsp. instant coffee

1/4 tsp cinnamon

powdered sugar for decoration

Preheat your oven to 350 F. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar until well combined and fluffy. Next, add the eggs and vanilla and mix until combined. Add the mashed bananas, then the baking soda, salt, and flour. Only mix until combined, if you over mix the bread will be tough. Pour into a greased 9x5 loaf pan.

In a food processor, mix 1/2 cup of walnuts, brown sugar, flour, cold butter, and instant coffee. Pulse until the mixture starts to come together and form little pea-sized crumbles. Top the batter with the crumble, then sprinkle on the cinnamon. If desired, you can add some roughly chopped walnuts for extra crunch. Bake until a inserted toothpick comes out clean or until nice and golden brown, about 50 - 60 minutes. Once done, let cool completely, slice and enjoy with a nice cup of hot coffee!

P.S. Try Laura's fantastic version done with pecans, you can find it here.