- Weekend Brunch Flatbreads – Recipe - 22 January, 2016
- Winter sea salt brownies – Recipe - 19 November, 2015
- Grilled Aubergine Bruschetta - 19 August, 2013
Look, it’s another recipe featuring fruit in desserts and chocolate chips! I promise this will be the last chocolate chip based recipe for a while but I just had to get it out of my system.
I am one of those weird people who like their bananas so green they are essentially still attached to a tree. As soon as they show the slightest hint of brown, or proper yellow to be perfectly honest, I can’t eat them anymore. This means my freezer is a more or less a hospice for bananas that have outlived their edibility. I do make quite a lot of them into smoothies, I call them smoothies, but in reality they are banana ice cream milkshakes. However, every once in a while I feel the urge to turn them into actual food.
Banana bread is pretty much unbeatable as far as comfort food goes. I think it tastes best straight out of the oven but toasting it for a couple of minutes under the grill and spreading some butter on top also makes for a great breakfast/dessert. The obvious advantage of banana bread over all other desserts is that as it’s called bread, clearly it’s acceptable to eat it at any time of day or night. I have spent many late night writing sessions slowly eating my way through a loaf of this stuff while desperately trying to remember the correct use of the Oxford comma. Make sure your bananas are fairly ripe before using them, they will be quite difficult to mash up otherwise and the flavour won’t be as good. In theory the walnuts and chocolate chips are optional but they lend the finished banana bread a nice bit of crunch.
3-4 ripe bananas
100g melted butter
160g light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
180g plain flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp salt
50g chocolate chips
50g walnuts
1. Spread the walnuts on a baking sheet and toast in the oven at 170C for 5mins. Take the walnuts out but leave the oven on.
2. Grease and flour a loaf tin.
3. Slice the bananas into a bowl and mash up with a fork, set aside. It’s fine if there are still plenty of chunky bits left over; you are not aiming for soup here.
4. In another bowl sieve together flour, baking powder and salt.
5. Combine butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract in a large bowl and mix until the colour becomes a bit lighter and air bubbles are forming.
6. Add the dry ingredients and the mashed banana to your sugar and egg mix until just combined. Stir in walnuts and chocolate chips.
7. Bake for 50-60 mins, or until the top is nice and golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
