Ratio of flour to sugar in banana nut bread.

I think it'll work. I never make a recipe that has equal amounts of sugar and flour; I know it'll be too sweet for me.

Another option is to increase the flour to 2 cups. With three large bananas and two eggs, there is plenty of liquid.
The 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder is just about useless. The 1/2 teaspoon of soda is an appropriate amount. But baking powder needs more than a teaspoon per cup of flour.

Compare to this:

BANANA BREAD

Best Recipe Cook's Illustrated

Recipe Introduction

Here's the recipe I used for years at the deli. We made 10 loaves at a time, never had any that didn't sell. We did it with nuts and with out the nuts. Even after making thousands of loaves, I still love banana bread. It's best to use very, very ripe bananas. I draw the line when I see mold. I remember goofing once and adding twice the amount of butter, it was very rich that time, a little over the top.
You can use plain yogurt as the recipe calls for or buttermilk, but we often didn't have either so we very often used whole milk with a teaspoon of vinegar stirred into it. You couldn't tell the difference.

List of Ingredients

2 C unbleached AP flour
¾ C sugar
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 C chopped walnuts (toasted if you have time)
3 very ripe bananas, mashed well
¼ C plain yogurt (buttermilk or sour milk works also as noted above)
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
6 Tabsp butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla

Recipe

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour bread pan.
Whisk dry ingredients together in a large bowl, stir in walnuts.
In a medium bowl mix together bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter and vanilla.
Add wet ingredients to the dry, mixing gently with a spatula, just to combine, batter should look lumpy. You don't want to over mix. Scrape batter into loaf pan.
Bake about 55 minutes, until loaf is golden and a toothpick comes out almost clean. It can have a crumb or two, but you don't want wet showing on the toothpick.
Cool about 5 min., then turn out of pan to finish cooling on a wire rack.

Makes 1- 9" loaf.

Nancy

Make sure your bananas are good and ripe if you reduce sugar in your recipe in order to compensate for the loss of sweetness from the sugar. I basically agree with the suggestions give by cloudy christine. I would have looked at your recipe and would have judged it as too sweet, too much liquid and not enough leavening...

Banana bread science... Baking soda is commonly the chemical leavening in banana bread, and the banana the acid ingredient that activates it. As bananas ripen, their acidity decreases, so their reaction in partnership with the baking soda is a weak one. A good banana bread recipe ensures adequate leavening by using BOTH baking powder and baking soda. This will assure the banana bread doesn't get too heavy.

Here's a tried and true recipe with even less sugar than you are wanting in your recipe, but more than enough sweetness. It's also wholegrain, low-fat and low-sodium for a nutritional plus.

-Grainlady

Banana-Poppy Seed Bread

1 c. mashed banana
1/2 c. sugar (I use 1/4-1/3 c. agave nectar - a low-glycemic sweetener.)
1/2 c. skim milk
3 T. vegetable oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 c. all-purpose flour (I use freshly-milled spelt flour)
1 c. whole wheat flour
2 T. poppy seeds (or whole amaranth seeds works well, too - you can leave the seeds out all together, if desired)
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. cinnamon
vegetable cooking spray

Combine the bananas and sugar in a small bowl; stir well. Let stand 10-minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in milk, oil, and egg; set the mixture aside.

Combine all-purpose flour and next 6 ingredients in a large bowl and stir well. Make a well in center of mixture; add banana mixture to dry ingredients, stirring until moistened (with a spoon, NOT an electric mixer - do not over-mix). Spoon into an 8-1/2x4-1/2x3-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray (a 9x5-inch pan is TOO large for this recipe).

Bake in a 350°F pre-heated oven for 1 hour, or until a pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes before removing - finish cooling on a wire rack.

Yield: 1 loaf, 16 slices (about 125 calories per 1/2-inch slice).

(Note: if you don't want a wholegrain version, use 2 cups all-purpose flour. I also add 2 T. flaxmeal to the recipe to increase the fiber. I often add walnuts (1/2 to 3/4 c.) to this recipe, but will omit the poppy seeds or amaranth seeds when I do.)

Yesterday I made Nancy's banana bread. Wonderful taste and picture perfect! As it seems that most of us do here on this forum, I made a few changes. Used sour cream instead of yogurt (no yogurt in the house), decreased the sugar to 1/2 c., and added a few dried sour cherries. YUM! This will be my go-to recipe for banana bread!

sugar counts as "liquid" when cooking.
I would think that if you reduced the sugar without making other compensations, the bread would be gummy...but I dobn't know how to compensate.
Why don't you try it and then you can tell us!
Linda C

Glad you liked it! I have 3 extra ripe bananas sitting on the counter right now and will be making this recipe in a little while. Adding dried cherries too!

Nancy

I also think that would be far too sweet, mine has a cup of sugar and two cups of flour. This is the recipe I usually use, from one of those little spiral bound "community" cookbooks:

BANANA BREAD

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas
3 tbls. Sour cream
1 tbls lemon juice
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Cream shortening and sugar. Beat in eggs, bananas, sour cream and lemon juice. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in nuts. Pour into a greased and floured loaf pan, bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, remove and finish cooling on rack.

Makes 1 loaf

I often use one cup of whole wheat flour and one cup of white flour, my family has never noticed the difference. Ssince I make my own yogurt I nearly always use that in place of sour cream, which I never have on hand. I also don't usually have shortening, so I've replaced it with butter with no discernible negative effcts.

It really looks a lot like Nancy's!

Annie

No, not gummy! What I did was reduce the walnuts to 3/4 c. and then added 1/2 c. of dried cherries. The cherries had some sugar on them, so this wasn't unsweet. It was sweet enough for those of us who don't like tooth-aching sweetness. The flavor of the bananas really stood out! Had a piece for breakfast, and might have another small one now. I've been outside in dripping humidity, weeding and spreading bark. Small piece of bread then off to the shower.

To help compensate for sweetness, you can also roast your bananas. This will really punch up the banana flavor -- it's quite good.

To roast them, take very ripe bananas, do NOT peel and place them on a cooking sheet. Bake at 325 degree for about 20 minutes until black. Cool and peel.

Keep an eye on them -- you want them nicely roasted and caramalized, but not so much that they turn to liquid. I've found the best bananas to roast are the ones that are very ripe, but maybe just a day shy of what I'd consider ripe enough for bread, if I wasn't going to roast them. So, ripe, but not THAT ripe, if that makes sense.