Food News

How Chrissy Teigen Crowd-Sourced Her New Banana Bread Recipe

October  3, 2017

It involved an overripe banana, an unsuspecting fan, and a sweet, fruity bundt. It’s a scavenger hunt for the digital age, a social media saga of Homeric proportions: Chrissy Teigen’s week-long quest to make the perfect banana bread. She traversed the internet and the city of Los Angeles.

The story begins in a place the cookbook author and celebrity chef knows well: Twitter. In September, she took to the social media platform to crowdsource browning bananas, the most necessary of ingredients in a successful banana bread, in exchange for an exclusive gift. Soon enough, what began with a query ended in triumph as her fans jumped to the rescue, sufficiently browned bananas in hand. Tiegen sent her mom/assistant to collect the spoiled spoils from Twitter user @bymeg. Follow the entire thread here:

Well, the results of this confounding, but wildly entertaining, Twitter thread have finally come to fruition—Teigen shared the much anticipated recipe for her “Banana Bundt Bread” on Instagram. The recipe, tested using some stranger’s bananas, will appear in her forthcoming sophomore cookbook, Cravings 2. According to her Instagram, the book is in its final week of recipe testing. Whether or not the crowdsourced banana bread recipe will feature remains to be seen. In the meantime, we can only try out the recipe for ourselves. Who knows, perhaps it will climb to "best banana bread on the internet" status.

Would you give this banana recipe a shot? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

See what other Food52 readers are saying.

  • amanda russell
    amanda russell
  • Sylvia
    Sylvia
  • SandraM
    SandraM
  • Tazmin A. Shariff
    Tazmin A. Shariff
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    krikri
Valerio is a freelance food writer, editor, researcher and cook. He grew up in his parent's Italian restaurants covered in pizza flour and drinking a Shirley Temple a day. Since, he's worked as a cheesemonger in New York City and a paella instructor in Barcelona. He now lives in Berlin, Germany where he's most likely to be found eating shawarma.

8 Comments

amanda R. October 14, 2017
I clicked on this thinking she had crowdsourced the actual recipe - now that would be a fun story.
 
Sylvia October 10, 2017
"Celebrity" names don't necessarily equal a good recipe. Please keep the processed out of your recipes.
 
SandraM October 10, 2017
That's so funny! And kinda takes me back to being a kid and being part of a community when you asked neighbours for a cup of sugar (brown bananas).☺
Also, very retro using vanilla pudding in a recipe!
 
Tazmin A. October 8, 2017
Boxes vanilla pudding??? Why bother cooking from scratch if you are going to include this processed chemical laden crap?? Why is this recipe even included on food 52????
 
krikri October 8, 2017
Nah. Don't really do recipes that call for "box of instant..." because (a) I live in Portugal and can't always get the same processed food, and (b) I cook to avoid processed food.
 
Maureen M. October 8, 2017
Nothing can beat the banana bread by Nigella.
https://www.nigella.com/recipes/banana-bread
 
Rhonda35 October 3, 2017
I'm game! I'll definitely give it a try - I mean, maybe this IS "the best" banana bread...the Holy Grail of the baking world! LOL!
 
AntoniaJames October 3, 2017
The two cups of sugar, given the ratio of other ingredients, plus the box of instant vanilla pudding are deal killers for me. I'll just leave it that. ;o)