Banana Bread

Now, I have to say before I start this that banana bread really isn't my thing. It's not that I dislike it it's just not quite a cake and not quite a bread and I never really know whether I'm meant to butter it, chuck some cream on it, heat it up and have it with ice cream, whatever. However, when a mate asked me to make a loaf for him, I was more than happy. It's a recipe I've never done before so it was a nice chance to experiment. The original recipe that I used is from "Bake Like The Best" and unusually for me I actually stuck pretty much point for point to the recipe.

The recipe itself is actually really, really simple. You'll need about 125g of white self raising flour and 100g of brown self raising flour, 150g demerara sugar, a pinch of salt, half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, half a grated nutmeg, 2 large ripe bananas, 175ml of orange juice, 2 beaten eggs and about 4 tablespoons of rapeseed oil (crisp and dry is rapeseed oil, in case you're about to go searching your local supermarket for something you might already have.)

Now, all you have to do is mash the bananas up with the orange juice and then add the oil and the eggs. In another bowl, add all your dry ingredients and then literally just add wet ingredients to dry and mix until the batter is quite smooth (although, unless you are a master masher, there probably will be a couple of chunks of banana hanging round, which I don't see as a bad thing.) The recipe calls for ripe bananas, and on short timing I did use ripe ones I'd bought a few days previously, but if you have over ripe ones, go for those: they're mushier to begin with, and the taste will be stronger in the bread.

Spoon into a greased 900g loaf tin (in the original recipe, you are supposed to line the tin as well, which you can but it's something I don't like doing and it worked just fine without) and bake on gas mark 4 for an hour then test to see if a skewer comes out clean. I think all in all my loaf took closer to an hour and ten minutes, I probably could have taken it out earlier but I didn't want to risk a goopy mess in the centre.

The recipe also says that you should leave it to cool completely in the tin before turning out, but I really, really wanted to try a piece so I tipped it out still warm and it was still perfect (and very yummy, sorry about the missing end piece, Lewi!) The outside has a gorgeous crumbly crust, whilst inside the bread is soft and sweet. Also, on the topic of how to serve banana bread, my mum had it warm with salted butter and said that was lush too, so might be worth a go!

Will you be trying the banana bread recipe? How do you serve your banana bread?

S xo.