I love banana bread!

Banana bread conjures up sentimental memories for me. When I was little, my grandad used to come over to our house every week for Friday night dinner. He had always been to Croydon market that morning and had always bought up loads and loads of individual bananas from the stall holders- just as they were packing up. Now, I don’t know if he liked bananas or not but there were always tons at our house!

We could never eat them all before they went bad, so mum used to make banana cake practically every weekend. Thank goodness it freezes well! Looking back we never got tired of it!

This particular banana cake was made when my friends Wendy and Theoda were coming round for coffee back in October. Wendy was one of the recipients of my honey cakes so when we were arranging what day and time to meet up she kept slipping in not so subtle hints that I should make the honey cake again. The conversation went something like this …..

Me: Are you free on Wednesday?

Wendy: Yes, honey cake, in the morning, honey cake.

ME: Okay shall we say 10 ish?

Wendy: Great, honey cake!?!

Wendy’s son, who isn’t keen on cake absolutely loved the honey cake I made for them, so I made them an extra one a week later and what with all the other honey cakes I made for Rosh Hashannah I was feeling a bit honey caked out! So I stood my ground and went with this old favorite.

Wendy was not disappointed! She added butter to her slice, which we never did as kids, I suppose that’s because we always thought of it as a banana cake rather than as a banana bread, but it really adds to the flavour.

The Ingredients

200g caster sugar

110g butter at room temperature

250g Plain flour

1 tsp of baking powder

2 eggs

75ml milk

250g ripe bananas (in their skins) around 3

75g dark chocolate

50g icing sugar

2tbsp water

How to make Banana bread

Pre-heat your oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, Gas mark 4. Line a loaf tin with baking paper. I use preformed liners available from Poundland as they are so much easier to fit.

Mash up the bananas so they are nice and squidgy. I strangely love doing this bit. The more ripe the bananas are the sweeter the bread will taste. This recipe is great for using up those blackening ones no one wants to eat!

Weigh up all the ingredients ready for mixing

Blend the butter and sugar together until really smooth, then add the eggs one at a time.

Add the baking powder to the flour then add them, one table spoon at a time to the mix. This will stop the mixture from curdling. Then the bananas can be added and mixed in well.

Add the milk slowly

Then pour the mix into your tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 45-55 minutes. When a skewer comes out dry it’s done.

The cake should rise gently in the centre. Pop it on a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the chocolate topping, melt the chocolate in a microwavable bowl. While it’s cooling a little make the icing in a separate bowl then mix the two together. Before it sets use a spatula to spread the chocolate icing over the top of the cake and leave to set.

You can also add a packet of chocolate chips to the cake mix for a really chocolatey cake.

Enjoy!

P.S. I got the images for this post ready last night. Then I went downstairs to watch ‘The Great Sport relief bake off ‘ and guess what they were making? Banana bread! What amazing timing. I have to say that I have never had a flop with banana bread and there was a lot of shouting at the TV last night. I can’t believe they all went so wrong when it’s so easy to make. Anyway you can see the catch up here!