I am quite addicted to baking and the fact that I have a devoted audience in my hubby makes it even more fun. On his nearly endless "when are you making this" list was Banana Bread. Now I dislike fruit and bananas are particularly revolting for me. But I like to make stuff the man likes so I finally made some.
This one, in fact, is the second attempt, and apart from a couple of mini disasters, it was quite successful. I surfed the Net for a recipe that didn't seem too daunting and I chose this one from the BBC GoodFood website.I tweaked the recipe as I am invariably inclined to do.
My pantry cupboard is full of a variety of ingredients sent by my friends from all over and I am now on a mission using up these ingredients instead of leaving them forgotten in the cupboard or refrigerator. For the banana bread I decided to use up the cinnamon flavoured chocolate chips my brother had got me from Dubai. I also doubled the recipe to make more than one loaf.
Here's my recipe -
Chocolate and Cinnamon Banana Bread
250 gms butter (I used Amul)
150 gms castor sugar
120 gms brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs, beaten
7 mashed bananas
Approximately 200 gms Hershey's Cinnamon Chocolate Chips (that's what was left in the bag)
400 gms white flour
2 tsp baking powder (I forgot to add this)
120 ml milk
In a largeish saucepan melt the butter. Keep the flame lowered so the butter doesn't boil quickly and turn into ghee. Add the sugars and the vanilla and stir gently to mix. The butter can splash out of the pan so be careful. Let the sugars and the butter meld together Do this on a low heat - you don't want the sugars to caramelise, you just want it all to mix.
Remove the pan from the heat and add the mashed bananas. Stir to combine. I was nervous about adding eggs to this mixture while it was hot so I let it cool for a couple of minutes and then added the eggs.
Once the eggs are blended in it's time to add the flour and baking powder. You can just sift them in together. Pour in the milk and mix it all well to get a smoothish batter. If the pan is not big enough pour the mixture into a large mixing bowl and then add the flour. That's what I did.
Add the chocolate chips and give it another stir. You can easily add walnuts if you like. Use regular chocolate chips and some powdered cinnamon if you can't get your hands on cinnamon chips.
Pour the batter into your prepared loaf tins and bake at 150C for 45 minutes in the fan mode with both elements on in your oven. If you don't have a fan in your oven bake at 170C. You can sprinkle demerara sugar on top of the loaf if you want a crunchy sweet topping on the loaf, if you like, as the original recipe suggests. I didn't because there's already plenty of sugar in the recipe and in the chocolate chips too.
Cool the loaf and remove from the tin. Slice and serve.
You can also bake individual cup cakes using this batter. Banana Cinnamon cup cakes will be great to add to your kid's tiffin box and even the hubby's lunch box :)
I had a couple of mishaps as I made this batch - I didn't read the original recipe properly so I didn't notice the 'self raising' bit about the flour! Then, once the loaves were in the oven the electricity went off! Thankfully that was for only 10 minutes and since I had left the loaves undisturbed in the oven, the final result was not so bad.
I made three loaves in disposable cases and had enough batter left over to make three little cup cakes. One loaf was sent with the hubby to be shared at his office, one I took to share with my girlfriends and one was made for a friend who misses good home baked stuff.
This recipe is ridiculously easy. Just gather your ingredients together and then it's a matter of mixing them in one by one. No need to crank up the stand mixer, all you need is a saucepan, a mixing bowl and a spatula. Even though I seriously dislike bananas this is one recipe I'm going to be making often.
Marathon Bloggers Project 52
