It may have been baked too often and discussed too often during that time, but it is still a handy and tasty recipe to know.
A loaf of banana bread not only uses up bananas that are near their end date, but it is also nutritious, filling and can be made with little fuss
There are lots of possibilities and ways to adapt the standard banana bread recipe, you can add a little ground cinnamon or some vanilla if you wish, and there are other variations suggested here.
I particularly like adding fruit. I have included a suggestion for blueberries, but you can also use fresh raspberries and likewise, the dried cherries can be substituted for golden raisins or chopped apricots.
I find it is often worth baking two loaves at once. If you have the oven on for that length of time it is advantageous to make use of it and then store a loaf for later. A whole loaf or slices of the loaf can be frozen and then defrosted when needed.
If you do not have chocolate chips, you can break a chocolate bar or Easter egg into pieces. It is best to try and keep the pieces relatively even in size, so they melt at the same rate. While I normally use dark chocolate, milk chocolate is also a nice addition.
Banana Bread
recipe by:Derval O'Rourke
This banana-bread recipe makes 10 slices.
Preparation Time
20 mins
Cooking Time
1 hours 10 mins
Total Time
1 hours 30 mins
Course
Baking
Ingredients
225g self-raising flour
a pinch of fine sea salt
100g cold butter, cut into cubes
90g golden caster sugar
100g dark chocolate chips
See Also2 Banana Bread Recipe75g hazelnuts, lightly roasted and chopped
2 eggs, lightly beaten
450g mashed bananas (4 medium sized ripe bananas)
1 extra banana to decorate
Method
Line a 2 pound loaf tin with baking parchment and preheat your oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4.
Sieve the flour and salt into a large bowl. Add the cubes of butter to the bowl and rub the butter into the flour until it looks like rough breadcrumbs.
Add the sugar, chocolate chips and chopped hazelnuts. Stir these into the mixture and make a well in the centre.
Mix the eggs and mashed banana in another bowl and add these into the well. Bring all of the ingredients together with a wooden spoon until combined.
Scoop the mixture into your prepared tin and flatten it with the back of a spoon. Slice your remaining banana lengthwise after you take it from the skin. Place each half on top of the loaf. It will sink slightly.
Bake the loaf for approximately an hour and ten minutes until golden on the top and firm to touch.
Once cool enough to handle remove the loaf from the tin using the baking parchment to gently leaver it out. Peel off the baking parchment and place the loaf onto a wire rack and allow it to cool down before cutting.
Baker's tips
If your banana bread is a bit dry it may be because your bananas were not ripe enough.
Nicely ripe bananas add moisture and sweetness to the recipe because the sugar content of a banana increases as it ripens, and it becomes softer and squishier.
They also become stronger in flavour which adds a more pronounced taste of bananas to the loaf. Mashing the banana well ensures it is incorporated evenly throughout the batter.
Another reason a loaf might be dry, or tough, is overmixing of the batter. Flour toughens and releases gluten when it is stirred, overdoing it will lead to a rubbery loaf. Just mix the batter until the ingredients are combined.
When combining the wet and dry ingredients, make sure you make a well in the centre of the bowl of dry ingredients.
This allows you to bring the dry ingredients slowly into the wet ones preventing bubbles of flour and allowing the two to combine with more ease.
Lightly whisk the eggs before adding them so that the yolks and whites are well combined.
If your bananas are not ripe enough you can accelerate the ripening process by placing unpeeled bananas in the oven at 150 ºC. Leave them to bake until they start to become brown, and you can use them straight away.
Alternatively, if you have a bit more time on your hands you can place your bananas into a brown paper bag and let them rest in a warm place. This will speed up the natural ripening process.
Bananas ripen by releasing ethylene gas, which then gets trapped in the paper bag helping them along quicker.
Variations
Blueberry & almond banana bread
Omit the chocolate and add 75g of chopped almonds in place of the hazelnuts. I buy whole almonds and chop them myself rather than using the nibbed version.
After the wet and dry ingredients are combined stir in 125g of fresh blueberries and scoop the batter in as mentioned in the recipe.
You can decorate the loaf with the banana sliced lengthwise or leave it off if you like.
Cinnamon crumble loaf
For this version, I leave the banana off the top of the loaf and leave out the chocolate and hazelnuts.
To make a cinnamon crumble topping you will need 85g of cold butter cut into small cubes, 60g of soft brown sugar, 40g of plain flour and 1 tsp of ground cinnamon. Rub them all together in a bowl until they look like rough breadcrumbs.
After you have scooped the cake batter into the tin and smoothened it down sprinkle the crumble on top. Bake as normal.
Pecan nut loaf
Pecan nuts add a lovely flavour to banana bread and a bit more oomph than the more traditional walnuts (which are also really nice). I add 120g of chopped pecan nuts in place of the chocolate and hazelnuts or leave in the chocolate if you like.
