I baked banana bread IN apples on a whim, and it turned out SO well! I am so excited and now I can’t wait to try baking more recipes in apples! This was almost like an inside out apple pie, but with a banana bread “crust”.
I was inspired by seeing a baked apple recipe from Jessica In The Kitchen (one of my favorite vegan food bloggers, definitely check out her website!). I also had some INCREDIBLY ripe bananas, so banana bread was highly necessary, so I decided to combine the baked apple recipe and the banana bread by adding her one-bowl vegan banana bread recipe to the apples.
The baked apple recipe cooks for about 35 minutes at 400 F, while the banana bread cooks for 60 minutes at 400 F. To reconcile this, I set my oven for 375 F and ended up baking the bread and apples together for about 25 minutes. Since the bread in the apple is smaller than a whole loaf, this worked perfectly!
I used a mix of Honeycrisp and Gala apples, and both worked great! I scooped my apples out more than in Jessica’s recipe, since I was baking bread in them. When scooping out the apples, be sure to leave enough apple at the bottom so it can hold the bread, but you do want to scoop it out significantly so there is a lot of room for the bread. I filled the apple up to the top, and the bread ended up puffing up a lot, which was kind of fun! So I would recommend erring on the side of filling them lower, rather than higher. I also sprinkled some Minneoats maple almond granola on top of the batter before baking, which added a delicious crunch.