Jamaican Banana Fritters

I love bananas- they're so versatile that you can do almost anything with them. For beakfast, banana fritters; for a snack, banana chips; for dinner, boiled green bananas; for dessert, banana bread. You see where I'm going with this?

Personally, banana fritters give me the most childish joy. Mainly because, although I've never lived in Jamaica, I spent a lot of my childhood summers visiting family there. And when we had a busy, or early, day planned, someone would always cook fritters for me to eat while I was running out of the house; early mornings and I never went well together. And while they're better freshly cooked and hot, I became fond of eating my cooling dish on a bus or in the car.

Something about banana fritters which I didn't realise until too late: while Jamaicans (or at least my family) mash up the bananas before cooking, if you go into a Chinese takeaway and see it on the menu, chances are that it's gonna be a whole chunk of a banana dipped into the batter and deep-fried. Which is all very well, but it kinda made me sick when I mistakenly ordered it and decided to eat it anyway. So here is the recipe for Jamaican style banana fritters. I've never cooked them for myself before, but I got this recipe from a mix of recipes online and from altering my mum's corn fritter recipe (who isn't actually Jamaican but Antiguan).

Warning: if you're looking for crispy fritters this is the wrong place, mine end up soft and chewy and gooey.


Banana Fritters

4 bananas
8 tablespoons of plain flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder (though next time I'll use less)
2/3 teaspoons of cinnamon
3 tablespoons of sugar
2 eggs
160ml milk

• Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then add the eggs and mix in as much as possible.
• Mash the bananas in another bowl with a fork (I suppose a blender might do as well, but why make more mess?) and add the cinnamon to the mash. Leave a few decent lumps to chew on.
• Add a bit of the milk to the flour mix, and then a bit of the banana, until everything is mixed in and smooth. (It shouldn't be runny, so you might not need all the milk).
• Heat some vegetable oil in your frying pan, then when it is sizzling hot you can dash a spoonful of the mix to the pan, keeping the heat on a medium flame/setting.
• Now I like to keep turning the fritters over after a few seconds (once I'm sure the bottom is slightly firm and I won't drop batter everywhere), but you can just heat each side for a couple of minutes.
• Don't worry if it looks dark, though the colour aim is maybe a light brown. So, unless the fritter is actually crispy and black, you've not burnt it.
• Put the fritters on papertowel to soak up some of the oil. :)
  

This makes anywhere from around 10 to 20 fritters depending how big you want them. I made around 15 with the width of a can of coke. And I still have batter left in my fridge. Just put some clingfilm over the bowl for an overnight fix or store it in an airtight container. 'Cause of the egg I wouldn't recommend leaving the batter for to long, although they DO taste really good, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Serve as is, or add honey or golden syrup or maple syrup or heck, even chocolate sauce.