Banana Bread

In the current circumstances, when so many people are having to stay at home, it seems that almost everyone is making banana bread.  I  made a version of it a couple of years ago, that incorporated some nuts, but have have decided to do another version which is slightly different in terms of ingredients.  The main reason for making this now is to show just how easy the recipe is to make.

This is another recipe and is very simple and, doesn’t have any difficult to obtain ingredients, provided you have some flour.  In fact if you only have bread flour, or cake flour rather than plain flour the recipe will still work well.  If you have selfraising flour you can still make the recipe, but leave out the baking powder.

Just a word on measurements of the flour.  The recipe uses 200 grams of flour and to convert that to cup measures I use a 250ml cup and scoop the flour from the container into the cup and level it off.  That amount of flour weighs 150 gram.  So like that the recipe needs 1 1/3 cups.  If, however, a person doesn’t scoop but spoons the flour into a cup measure that only weighs 130 grams. and under those circumstances the amount would be 1 1/2 cups + 1 tsp.  It is that inconsistency which makes many people buy a kitchen scale as, even if you don’t like the metric system you can convert 200g accurately enough to 7 ounces.

My banana bread baked very well, though I actually let it bake for 70 minutes as although a skewer came out without crumbs it was still very moist.  I believe that was because I blended the bananas too much.  They need to still have some lumps in. I let it cool down before cutting into it.  The taste and texture were so good.  I ate two slices with a single cup of tea.  

As I mentioned earlier banana bread often has some chopped nuts in and you could easily add 50g of chopped walnuts or hazelnuts etc into the batter just before it goes into the oven.  For me this was not necessary and I wanted to keep things simple but still very tasty, for those who don’t have access to so many ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 450g( 3 to 4 or 1lb) peeled weight of bananas.
• 200g(1 1/3 cups) plain flour
• 120g (8 1/2 tbsp) unsalted butter at room temperature
• 120g(1/2 cup + 1 1/2 tbsp) caster sugar, or granulated.
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 medium eggs (large in USA)
• pinch of salt
• lemon juice to prevent browning of bananas(I used 1/2 a lemon)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F.
2. Grease and flour a 2lb/900g loaf tin, and line the bottom with parchment paper if you wish.
3. Slice the bananas into small pieces, or simply break into larger pieces and place in a bowl with the lemon juice.
4. Use a fork to mash the bananas to a lumpy puree, or use an immersion blender to mash to the same consistency. Don’t go too far and make it too smooth.
5. Set to one side.
6. Place the butter and sugar into a large bowl and mix together until the mixture in combined and still quite roughly textured. I did everything with my hand mixer, but by hand works fine.
7. Add the eggs and salt and mix to fully combine into a fairly smooth mixture.
8. Add the banana mixture and again mix until fully combined.
9. Add the cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda into the plain flour and mix around a little to incorporate.
10. Add that dry mixture in three additions to the wet mixture and gently mix until combined.
11. Use a spatula to give a final few stirs, reaching to the bottom of the bowl to ensure there is no flour that has not been mixed in.
12. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and shake a little to level off.
13. Bake in the oven for about 60 minutes, until a skewer poked into the middle will come out cleanly. If it is still very moist leave it for another 10 minutes and test again.
14. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for at least 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.