Pencil and Fork

When you have that perennial bunch of overripe bananas, there are lots of things you can do to use them up. One of the best is baking a banana loaf. This recipe comes from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, a lovely cookbook from the folks at London’s Hummingbird Bakery, full of recipes for American-style sweet things. The banana loaf is definitely one of the less decadent things in there!

Ingredients: (makes one banana loaf):

• 270 g (9.5 oz; 1.35 cup) soft, light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 200 g (7 oz) mashed bananas
• 280 g (9.9 oz; 2 ¼ cup) plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 140 g (5 oz; 0.6 cup) unsalted butter, melted

The original recipe uses metric measurements; conversions are approximate

The only change I made is that I replaced the ginger in the original recipe with nutmeg as I had run out of ginger. Nutmeg is lovely though, so it’s ok! The method is very easy and doesn’t take long.

Beat the sugar and eggs together, add the mashed bananas and mix again.

Sift the dry ingredients and mix them in.

Pour the melted butter in and beat it a bit more.

Pour it all into a greased and floured loaf tin and bake it at 170°C (325°F, Gas Mark 3). It should take about an hour, mine took about an hour and 20 minutes, at which point the skewer I inserted came out clean.

Banana loaf wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice to make, or to eat, but it turned out really well and is very tasty. The banana taste isn’t too strong, and it had a slight background of spices. The texture was really moist, with a slightly crunchy crust. I think it would work well with some pecan nuts or something added.