Banana Bread

Bananas seem to be a recurring theme, but I have a bunch of ripe bananas in my fridge and my banana fritters only took care of 4 of them. Now, the fritters are a novelty for me (at least in terms of me making them myself), but I am an old hat at the Banana Bread. Here's the story:

When I was in primary school, the book van would come around maybe once a year, around World Book Day, and my mum would allow me to buy any books that caught my eye. Although I loved reading fiction, I got those books all the time, so I would inevitably end up with joke books, nail decorating kits, books about jacks and other playground games, etc. One year the book I bought was "The Kids' Round the World Cookbook." Best Cookbook in the world! I loved it. Each page devoted to a different part of the world, ranging from Africa to Wales.

The Kids' Round the World Cookbook

For the Caribbean, they covered Banana Bread and Pineapple Ice-cream. As a child very much aware of my Caribbean heritage, Banana Bread was the first thing I attempted from the cookbook (mum vetoed the icecream recipe), and even then, I showed my flair for uniqueness and independance by changing the recipe and using a muffin tin to make Banana Bread Muffins from the left over batter, as my loaf tin was quite small.

The recipe calls for:
500g bananas
250g plain flour

1 tablespoon baking powder
125g sugar

125g butter
1 egg

1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
4 tablespoons chopped pecans (optional)
100g raisins (optional)

Directions

• First weigh and sieve the dry ingredients - flour, salt, spices etc - into a bowl.
• Peel and mash the bananas in another bowl.
• In a third bowl, beat the sugar into the butter. Then add the egg and mix thoroughly.
• Now, alternating between the flour and the banana, add a spoonful to the egg mix and fold in. I use a rice paddle for this; a spatula will do too.
• Here is a good place to add the nuts and raisins.
• Once its all mixed in, spoon the batter into a well buttered loaf tin and bake for an hour at 170°C/350°F/gas mark 4.
• After the hour check it's cooked by sticking a knife in the banana bread. If it's done the knife should come out looking clean.

Any leftover batter makes brilliant muffins.

Personally I usually halve this recipe, but use the same egg, salt & spice amounts. If you have too much batter the banana tends to sink to the bottom. If I can be bothered I'll use 3/4 of the amounts suggested to get a bigger loaf and still have the banana evenly distributed through the loaf.

I added a teaspoon of cinnamon, and today I used 1 teaspoon ground allspice (pimenta) as I had no nutmeg. That was a new thing for me. I use allspice in my Jamaican curries and thought they smelled alike, so I hoped it would work. It really did- brilliantly so. I later did some research and found that allspice is a typical substitue for nutmeg and cinnammon. I also left out the nuts and raisins.

Another tip is to wait until the bananas start looking brown and are slightly mushy. A lot of people get squeamish when bananas look like this, but this is when they're the sweetest.

Also, DO NOT BUTTER!

Someone took the name literally once and buttered it. One word - yuck. Eat it like a slice of cake. It's delicious! Everyone loves my banana bread and I usually make & sell it when there are charity bake sales.

Happy eating,

student_gourmand