A banana bread hug
#Eat Plentiful 56
Just when I thought things couldn’t get busier, last week was an intense combination of hosting until late at the new restaurant, which takes a lot more out of you than you think, waking up early to take Woody to school as I wasn’t seeing him at all in the evenings and the usual workdays as day to day business needed to be taken care of. And unsurprisingly, on the Friday night, after 6 nights in a row of having dinner at the restaurant, we had dinner there again with friends and I felt awful. I must have caught a small stomach bug, I spent most of Saturday in bed sleeping, made it out for a few hours Sunday before heading back home to the safety of my bed.
My true measure of illness, was the fact that for almost a week I was completely uninterested in food. No scrolling through food photos, no reading cookbooks, no desire to cook. It doesnt happen often. One morning last week, I did finally wake up early feeling extremely hungry, the storm had passed. It was 5.45am and I thought I’d make a banana bread ready for when the boys woke up.
Woody is a big fan of bananas, he is also very picky about his bananas and will not eat a banana which has brown marks on it even if it’s perfectly fine to eat. This platonic ideal is very hard to keep up so over the course of a week I usually put any less than perfect looking bananas in a paper bag. I know that by the end of the week, they will a be overripe, exactly like I need them for my banana bread. Every good banana bread recipes calls for overripe bananas, they add sweetness, moisture and more concentrated banana flavour.
For me banana bread is the kind of treat that wraps its arms around you and tells you everything is going to be ok. It’s the first cake I remember making with my mother, squishing bananas with my hands and licking the uncooked cake mixture off my fingers. Still to this day, it is the only cake I regularly cook, I am not particularly interested in baking anything else than that.
Ingredients
190g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
A generous pinch of sea salt
200 g dark brown sugar (packed)
2 tbsps of Greek yogurt, or creme fraiche
60g unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs
4 large very ripe bananas, peeled and mashed (about 350 g)
Optional (60g desiccated coconut, chopped dark chocolate or raw walnuts)
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 175°C. Lightly coat a loaf tin with butter and line it with parchment paper, leaving overhang on the longer sides.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Beat together the dark brown sugar, yoghurt and butter in a large bowl until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one.
Add the dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. Fold in the mashed bananas and if using, gently fold in the chopped chocolate, walnuts or coconut. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan.
Bake for 60–65 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer the tin to a wire rack and let the bread cool in the tin for 30mins then turn it over and let the bread cool down.
Its best if you wait until the bread has cooled down before cutting it. There’s nothing more comforting than a warm slice or banana bread with a generous slab of salted butter. Also tastes good with peanut butter, chocolate spread, fruit compote and a spoon of creme fraîche.
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Things I’ve enjoyed this week
In this case, enjoyed in an understatement, I devoured the series Rivals on Disney, based on the novel by Jilly Cooper and produced by my very clever aunt Eliza Mellor. It’s very raunchy, funny, sad at times and every single character is well thought through. Danny Dyer is a real surprise in it, almost cute I might say! Waiting impatiently for season 2!
Perhaps arriving very late on the Açai berry trend but I had an Açai bowl from Oakberry this week, toppings of choice granola, peanuts and coconut flakes, and I’m obsessed. I loved every single mouthful. It felt naughty but healthy at the same time
Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast: Feel Better, Live More. I’ve been listening to this podcast for over 2 years now and I never tire of it. For anyone interested in living a healthy lifestyle, this covers every topic from nutrition to mental health and exercise with the help of world experts in these fields. It gives you all the tools to empower you to make the right decisions.
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Thanks for sticking around once more.
See you next week.
A