Why you are cooking this tonight
Banana bread is what happens to the three browning bananas in the fruit bowl on a Sunday afternoon. Mash them, mix them into a cinnamon-spiced butter batter, pour into a loaf tin, bake fifty-five minutes. You end up with a cake that is technically breakfast, definitely afternoon tea, and arguably dessert.
The banana needs to be properly ripe. Black-spotted, soft, sweet. If they are still firm and yellow, put them in a brown paper bag on the counter for two days. Fresh bananas will not give you the deep caramel-banana flavour that makes this cake the cake.
Notes on method
Good quality butter, brown sugar not white, a generous pinch of salt. Do not overmix once the flour goes in – you are making a quick bread, not a sponge.
What to pour with it
A long black coffee. Sliced and toasted the next day with butter.
The recipe
Ingredients
Method
- Preheat oven to 170°C fan-forced. Grease and line a 23x12cm loaf tin.
- Mash bananas in a large bowl with a fork. Whisk in melted butter, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla.
- Sift in flour, cinnamon, bicarb and salt. Fold through with a spatula just until combined. Fold in walnuts if using.
- Pour batter into the loaf tin. Optionally, slice a banana in half lengthways and press cut-side up along the top.
- Bake 50-55 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in tin 10 minutes, then on a rack.
- Slice and serve with butter. Keeps for 4 days wrapped in the fridge.