It had to happen!
The recipe seems to be taking over social media, whilst we’re in lockdown, so my Mum and I decided to give it a go ourselves!
The recipe we used came from BBC Good Food, which is my go-to place for recipe inspiration. This recipe was called ‘Brilliant Banana Loaf’, if you want to see the original and the icing recipe, as we decided not to ice ours.
Ingredients:
140g Butter
140g Sugar
2 Large Eggs
140g Self-Raising Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
2 Very Ripe Bananas
Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C Fan/Gas Mark 4
2. Line your tin. We used Loaf Tin Liners, which made it so much quicker and easier to line the tin, as it was already the right shape so there was no cutting or measuring.
3. Next weigh out your butter and sugar (140g of each). To save washing up, because we knew they were going in the mixer together, we measured the butter into a bowl, then zeroed the scales and measured the sugar on top. Add this to your mixer and cream them together.
4. Beat the two eggs in the bowl you’ve just used, so it catches any last grains of sugar left behind. Add this to your mixer and beat again.
(Tip! Make sure you use the right attachment in your mixer! We were using the whisk attachment and all the butter just got stuck inside! Try and use something that will beat like a wooden spoon. In our Kenwood mixer, it has a K mixer attachment, which was so much better!! Please don’t make my mistake!)
5. Measure out your flour. Keep the mixer slowly mixing and add the flour in a little bit at a time until it is all combined.
6. Add a teaspoon of baking powder to the mixture too, until combined.
7. Mash your ripe bananas and combine with your mixture. Beat well to make sure the banana is evenly distributed throughout the mixture, so everyone gets a fair amount, when it is sliced.
8. Pour the mixture into the lined loaf tin. Use a spatula to make sure you get all the mixture out of the mixing bowl.
9. Bake the cake in your preheated oven for 30 minutes.
10. When the time is up, use a skewer to poke into the middle of the cake. If the skewer comes out clean, the cake is cooked. If not, bake for a few more minutes and check again. We had to bake ours a little longer, but we checked after a few minutes, so it didn’t overbake.
11. Bring the cake out of the oven and put on a wire rack. Keep it in the tin for the first 10 minutes of cooling, then transfer to the wire rack. The loaf liner makes this easy, as you can just pick up the sides of it and know that your cake won’t fall out.
12. Leave to cool. (Try to resist the urge to eat it immediately!)
13. Then slice and enjoy!
Now I am not the biggest banana fan, but even I liked this. Using overripe bananas means that they are sweeter than they normally are, so they work really well in this cake recipe. Plus, this is a really good way of using food that would just have been thrown away otherwise! So, whilst you enjoy your slice of Banana Bread, you can enjoy the fact you are preventing food waste!
You can adapt this recipe too! I have seen chocolate chip banana breads, vegan banana breads and nutty banana breads online. We used the standard recipe, as this was our first time making it, but if you want to jazz it up a bit, feel free. See what you’ve got in the cupboards and what would work in this cake!
If you give it a go, I hope you enjoy your creation! Let me know how it goes! And please don’t make the mistakes that I did!