20 Banana Bread Mix-Ins That Elevate Your Loaves

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Banana bread is one of the recipes I recommend every baker master before moving on to more advanced bakes. You can learn a lot from this humble quick bread — especially if you're a beginner. From mixing and measuring ingredients to knowing when the loaf is ready to be pulled from the oven, banana bread can help set the foundation for your baking skills going forward. It's also the perfect opportunity to practice adding in different ingredients to alter a recipe's texture and flavor, without losing the essence of the recipe itself.

If you're new to the banana bread world, fear not. I chatted with expert recipe developers Rose Sioson from Deliciously Rushed and Joanne Gallagher from Inspired Taste, and used my own experience as an avid home baker and cooking class instructor to share some of the tastiest add-ins you can try in your banana bread recipe. These beginner-friendly ingredients may appear relatively basic, but they can step up your loaf in ways you likely never thought possible. 

Chocolate chips are a must-have for any banana bread loaf. Not only do the chips impart a delectably sweet and chocolatey flavor, but they also add extra moisture to your loaf. Size matters when it comes to your chocolate. "Mini chocolate chips are so much better than regular ones because you get chocolate in every single bite," says Rose Sioson from Deliciously Rushed. 

However, you don't just have to stick to only one size. "My trick for incredible chocolate chip banana bread is incorporating both mini and standard chocolate chips into the batter, because the mini chips just dissolve into the bread," says Joanne Gallagher, recipe creator and co-founder of Inspired Taste. You don't just have to use semi-sweet or milk chocolate, either. Dark chocolate adds a subtle bitterness to your bread, while white chocolate provides the perfect color contrast and increases the sweetness of your recipe.

Coconut flakes are the perfect tropical addition you didn't know your banana bread needed. This simple ingredient adds a delectable tropical flavor to your bread and intensifies its nuttiness. 

Rose Sioson recommends toasting your coconut flakes until they're golden. This can be done in your air fryer in no time at all, and it makes a big difference in the overall flavor of your loaf. I recommend using unsweetened coconut flakes in your recipe, as you don't want to make the bread's flavor too sweet. Coconut pairs well with many other banana bread add-ins, including blueberries, walnuts, warming spices, and rum.

"Warming spices" is a big, beautiful umbrella that includes everything from standard cinnamon and cloves to cardamom, star anise, and ginger. Many of these seasonings have an interesting enough flavor to perk up your batter, but not so much that they overwhelm its flavor entirely. Adding cinnamon alone can deepen the flavor of your batter; it pairs well with the sweetness of the fruit and any additional sweeteners you include in the batter. Another underutilized warming spice for banana bread is cardamom. It has a beautifully complex, minty, and almost citrusy flavor that can stand on its own or work in tandem with ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. 

Not only will warming spices make your banana bread taste fantastic, but they will also make it super aromatic and enticing. Add the spices directly to the batter, or consider mixing them into a streusel topping with butter and cinnamon.  

Pineapple is a very vibrant and delicious addition to banana bread. It's sweet, slightly citrusy, and adds a ton of extra moisture into your loaf. The important thing to note when using pineapple is that it's very easy to go overboard and add too much to your bread. Not only does this risk disrupting its texture, but also its flavor. 

The banana flavor should also be first and foremost, which is why we would caution adding any more than a can of pineapple (8 ounces) for every 2 cups of mashed banana. If you're going the canned fruit route, you should opt for crushed pineapple, rather than whole pineapple pieces or pineapple chunks, so that the fruit better distributes through the batter and flavors it more evenly.

The best way to punch up the flavor of anything? Add booze. Rum is an excellent choice for banana bread in particular, as it brings out subtly sweet, molassey, and oaky undertones that complement the tropical fruit quite well. You can even try a dessert fusion with a twist on bananas Foster banana bread by topping the loaf with rum, caramel, and flambéed fruit. 

If you're adding the liquor directly to your banana bread, be careful not to make the batter too wet. Baking will burn off some of the alcohol, so you don't have to worry about making a hangover-inducing loaf, but adding too much can make the batter bitter or overly watery. Stick to a couple of tablespoons — no more than ¼ cup — per loaf. 

Blueberries and bananas are one of those unlikely duos you wouldn't expect to work, but once you get them in the same room (or in this case, bowl), you can really appreciate their potential. The berries have just the right level of florality to elevate the natural sweetness of the bananas. Unlike other fruits (like pineapple), they don't really take over the banana bread. Instead, they infuse it with moisture and a delectable pop of flavor. 

The most important thing to keep in mind when adding blueberries to your banana bread is that you're making banana bread spiked with blueberries — not blueberry bread spiked with bananas. Add no more than ½ cup of fresh or frozen blueberries per loaf (some recipes recommend 1 cup, but I think that's too much), and try pairing them with cinnamon, cardamom, and maple syrup. 

The nice thing about banana bread is that you can use it as a blank canvas to experiment with different flavors and add-ins. If you're looking for a complementary salty bite, consider Joanne Gallagher's suggestion: crushed pretzels. She says they add a "sweet-salty surprise" to your loaf. Not only will you get an excellent contrast from the salt crystals, but also some added starchiness from the pretzels.

Be careful when adding this snack food to your banana bread, as pretzels don't stay fresh for long — especially when mixed into a moist batter. To stave off a stale bite, I recommend using chocolate-covered pretzel pieces instead of regular ol' tiny twists. Or, whip up a pretzel streusel of sorts and encourage everyone to take an extra slice or two so that there aren't any leftovers. 

Espresso powder is a beautiful and often underutilized ingredient in baking. It's not the same as the coffee grounds you'd add to your coffee machine; like instant coffee granules, instant espresso powder dissolves in liquid. So, when you add the powder to your banana bread batter, you'll find that the flavor blends easily with the other sweet and fruity notes at hand, making for a delectable bite. 

I won't lie to you: Espresso powder's flavor is potent, so potent that it may overwhelm the flavors of your banana bread if not used carefully. In small doses, it can bring out the flavors of other add-ins, especially chocolate. You may need to add only a few teaspoons to your batter to heighten certain flavor profiles. That said, if you love the taste of coffee, you can be a little more heavy-handed. 

Sour cream is an ingredient with potential I didn't fully harness until I added it to a muffin recipe on a whim. And boy, does it make a difference. It's the ingredient Martha Stewart adds to her banana bread, and if you're after a moist, flavorful loaf, it's one you should try, too. 

This moist, fatty ingredient offers your bread a luxurious mouthfeel and helps it retain its texture even after baking. It's also a great ingredient to add to banana bread because the acid tenderizes the gluten, which can come in handy if you tend to over-mix your batters. The acid also helps bolster the quick bread's rise, ensuring that your loaf comes out of the oven towering and ready to be devoured. While you can substitute buttermilk for sour cream, I find Greek yogurt (sespecially the full-fat version) to be a better substitute because it mimics the same fat content and mouthfeel. 

Have you met banana's best friend, caramel? If not, let me play matchmaker for a second. Caramel is sweet, sure, but it also has distinct oaky, vanilla, and nutty notes that act as the perfect foil to the subtle tropical flavor of bananas. Using caramel chips is an easy way to incorporate this ingredient into your loaf, as all you need to do is give them a stir. The caramel will melt as the loaf bakes, infusing the entire thing with flavor. You can also drizzle caramel on top of the loaf after you've pulled it out of the oven. 

Joanne Gallagher recommends adding chopped toffee to banana bread, which could be especially tasty when mixed with pretzel bits. Toffee is slightly different than caramel, as the former has a more pronounced brown sugar flavor, which meshes well with not only the flavor of your banana bread, but also other add-ins, like nuts and oats. 

Peanut butter and banana are an iconic duo, and one worth reuniting in your next banana bread recipe. While the peanut flavor is undoubtedly strong, it is the perfect foil to the fruit, and adding a gob of it to your batter will make it all the more rich and indulgent. There are many ways to add peanut butter to your recipe, including in the form of peanut butter chips or in spoonfuls straight from the jar. 

If you're going with the latter, I recommend heating the peanut butter in the microwave for a little bit so it's easier to mix into your batter. Both peanut butter and banana are in good company with chocolate, which is why mini peanut butter cups are also worth trying in your next batch of banana bread. Regardless of how you add it, you're in for a rich mouthful and a punchy, nutty profile. 

Cream cheese is at home on a bagel, but it also makes a great addition to a batch of banana bread. Rose Sioson adds room-temperature cream cheese to her loaves, marbling the top. "It creates these pockets of tangy richness that cut through all that banana sweetness," she says. Besides switching up the flavor of your bread, this hack also gives banana bread a funky yet fun look. 

If you're going with the swirled route, add some of the banana bread batter to your greased loaf pan, dollop in the cream cheese (full-fat is preferable, as it gives you the most toothsome bite), and then swirl it with a spatula or knife. While you can just drop the cheese into the batter and not swirl it, this will create a very fatty pocket of cream cheese and may even cause it to sink to the bottom of your loaf. Swirling ensures it's well distributed in every bite. 

I love cooking with miso paste, though I understand why the ingredient may raise some eyebrows — especially if you haven't worked with it before. This salty, umami paste will wallop your banana bread with flavor, but it has to be added to the batter carefully because it's so concentrated. If used heavy-handedly, it can make your loaf a little too savory. However, when you find a way to balance its flavor with something sweet — like caramel — you'll discover that it can add dimension to your loaf in ways you never thought possible. 

You don't need to use much miso paste to taste it, especially if it's red miso (the most flavorful of the varieties). I recommend adding a couple of tablespoons to your homemade caramel sauce, then mixing that sauce into your banana bread. It may also be a good idea to stick to the less aggressive types of miso — white or yellow — as you gain experience working with it. 

Nuts are a classic add-in to banana bread, and it's easy to see why. They break up the texture of your loaf and add a complementary nutty flavor that elevates every bite. Rather than using raw nuts, take Rose Sioson's recommendation and toast them before adding them to your loaf. "I always toast walnuts or pecans first because it brings out this incredible buttery depth that plays perfectly against sweet bananas," she says. "The crunch factor is everything." 

Joanne Gallagher shares that she likes to stir toasted nuts into her banana bread right before baking to ensure they stay perfectly crisp. Besides integrating whole pieces of pecans, walnuts, and even pine nuts, you can also use different nut butters and flours in your recipe. Almond flour, for example, offers a subtle nutty flavor and is the first step to creating a gluten-free banana bread loaf.

If you are a big fan of oatmeal cookies, you're going to love adding rolled oats to your banana bread. Rose Sioson adds this ingredient to her loaf for texture. While a sprinkle of oats on top of the loaf will give you a subtle crunch, adding them to the batter will help it keep its moisture. 

However, If you want to make your loaf extra chewy and don't want the oats to pull moisture from the surrounding batter, you can try pre-soaking the oats before stirring them in. Their flavor is pretty neutral, so you can pair them with any number of banana bread add-ins and not worry about changing the loaf's flavor too much. 

Another option is blending the oats in a food processor until they're powdery, then replacing a portion of your regular flour with them. Oat flour has a slightly spongy consistency that will make your bread extra moist, and it can also be used as a gluten-free alternative (provided that the oats used to make the flour are certified gluten-free).  

Maple syrup is sweet, oaky, and complex — making it the perfect addition to your next loaf of banana bread. You can use this ingredient as a substitute for sugar in your loaf, though you need to be mindful of how much you use. It's sweeter than granulated sugar, so adding too much can make your bread overly sweet (and may even cause it to brown faster). It's also a liquid, so you may need to modify your recipe to ensure your loaf doesn't become too moist.

Besides adding the syrup to the batter, you can also make a maple glaze for the top of it. Mix together maple syrup, butter, and powdered sugar, and pour it on top of your loaf once it's cooled.

No, adding vegetables to your banana bread won't inherently make it "healthy," but it will make it extra moist. Shredded carrots (or shredded zucchini, if you have a bumper crop) are excellent additions to banana bread because they don't alter its flavor too much, nor do they cause the loaf to become too "crunchy." 

As the veggies cook, they'll release moisture into the batter, keeping it toothsome and soft for days to come. If you're adding veggies, just make sure to grate them well and squeeze out all that extra liquid with a cheesecloth or towel before mixing them into your batter.

Citrus fruits can add a unique depth of flavor to baked goods — banana bread included — and can help balance an especially sweet recipe. Joanne Gallagher adds both lemon zest and lemon juice to her banana bread recipe, though you should add these ingredients very carefully to your batter. The acidity from the juice can kickstart your leavening agents, which can alter the rise of your loaf. So, you want to add just enough juice to lighten the flavor of the loaf but not cause irreversible damage to its texture (no pressure, right?). 

Although it's arguably a less popular addition to banana bread, you can also add orange zest to your recipe. Just make sure not to take too much of the pith off the fruit; otherwise the batter can taste bitter. 

The number one ingredient I recommend bakers add to their banana bread if they want it taste like it just came out of a professional bakery is brown butter. This ingredient gets its name from the toasted milk solids left over after you cook the butter down. Its aroma is nutty and reminiscent of hazelnuts, while its flavor has much more depth than plain butter alone. Sure, making it adds one extra step to your recipe, but it's worth trying if you're after a delicious loaf. 

Rose Sioson agrees. "It adds this caramelized, almost nutty flavor that makes people ask, 'What's different about this?' in the best way," she says. Once your brown butter has finished cooking, let it cool before adding it your batter to prevent cooking your eggs (or other ingredients) on contact. 

Poppy seeds honestly weren't a banana bread mix-in I had in mind until Rose Sioson mentioned them. "A tablespoon [of poppy seeds] gives you these little bursts of nutty flavor and such a pretty speckled look," she says. You can add the poppy seeds directly to your batter, or add a sprinkle on top of your loaf before baking to give it a crust-like coating. 

The seeds themselves don't taste like much — but that's precisely why they're one of the best add-ins for banana bread. You can pair them with other ingredients, including nuts, dried fruits, and sesame seeds, or use them as a standalone addition to your loaf.