Ultimate Banana Bread

I hope this post finds you safe and well (as can be given the circumstances) in quarantine. Today I bring you slightly different content as I can no longer go traipsing around London looking for pancakes and parks. Something I will never take for granted ever again.

No, today, whilst I am not departing from the theme of food, I am going back to my blogging roots (I had a baking blog when I was at secondary called 'The Little Elf Bakery', which I unfortunately deleted) and bringing you an extremely delicious banana bread recipe. Probably/hopefully you will already have all the ingredients for it in your fridge/cupboard/pantry. I've always loved to bake and I thought other people did to. Recently however, I had to teach my flatmate how to make a Victoria sponge cake and it was semi-painful to watch, which, is pretty ironic given that his nickname is cookie. When the instructions ask that you cream the butter and sugar together, please don't take this to mean flick said butter and sugar upwards out of the bowl. It was hard to witness such butchered baking technique (no offence). Luckily, by the end of it he was quite proficient at this stage and actually made a very good sponge cake. For that fluffy, creamy centre, you want to fold and push the butter and sugar together in a motion that goes towards the centre of the bowl. This is the time to get as much air into the batter as possible so when most of the sugar has been absorbed by the butter, you want to whisk it like a machine. A good time to stop is when you feel like your arm is going to fall off. This is a good cake for beginners as the recipe is pretty simple.

I was ordered to make banana bread by my locust brother. He tries not to eat dairy, so I have been attempting to create a light and fluffy banana bread without eggs. This has not been an easy feat. At first, I followed a recipe that replaced the eggs with vegetable oil. However, that left me with a cake that was too hard and crispy on the outside and too stodgy and heavy on the inside. A quick google revealed that egg creates the fluffiness because of the protein it contains. Vegetable oil was just not cutting it as an egg substitute, Maybe there's just not enough protein inside it. Instead, I started to experiment with soya yoghurt and soya milk. To be honest, I would recommend putting a big dollop of yoghurt in cakes even when the recipe doesn't call for it because (and I'm going to use the word that everybody shudders at) it makes the cake super moist. This worked a lot better. Butter isn't an issue either as there are lots of great alternatives that don't contain any dairy and work just as well in any cake.

Also, just a side note; I've seen the meme circling that says "What is it about a global pandemic that signals to people it's time to make some fucking banana bread?" If we're going to be hating on any baked good I think it should be fig rolls because, ew. Banana bread is delicious and comforting which is why it's the perfect cake for an apocalypse/worldwide pandemic.

Recipe:

- 4 medium, well-ripened bananas (the browner the better, you can't make banana cake with yellow bananas; they should just mush really easily)
- 100g dark chocolate (75/80%)
- 250g butter (I used Vitalife)
- 200g demerara sugar (you can also use caster sugar, but I prefer the depth of brown sugar)
- 350g self-raising flour
- 150g yoghurt (I used Alpro Soya, but Greek yogurt is also really nice)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees. You can also grease the cake mould to get it out of the way (just take a piece of kitchen towel with a bit of butter on it and rub it all around the inside of your tin).

2. Cream the butter and the sugar together.

3. Set this aside and in a different bowl, mush your bananas with a fork. It should look pretty gloopy with little bits of banana it it.

4. Add your mushed bananas to the butter/sugar mixture and stir until everything is mixed.

5. Add the yoghurt and stir again until everything has combined. Don't worry if it looks like it's splitting.

6. Sift in the flour and fold in gently. This is the stage where you want to keep all the air in your mixture that you got it from beating the butter and sugar together. Be gentle with it here so all the air doesn't escape.

7. Cut up your chocolate bar into small pieces. I refuse to buy chocolate chips because they are ridiculously over-priced and a marketing con. Once the chocolate is cut up, fold gently into the mixture.

8. Pour the mixture into the baking tin and put it into the oven.

9. After half an hour, cover the cake with aluminium foil (only if it looks like it's going to burn, you can do this at any time but the more you open the oven the higher the possibility the cake will collapse). I then left the cake in the oven for another 1hr 25mins. So in total 1hr 45mins. This may sound like quite a long time but it is a wet cake because of the yoghurt and the bananas. However, if you think your cake looks done beforehand, stick a knife into the centre. If it comes out clean, your cake is done. It does vary oven by oven.

10. Once it is ready, tip it out onto a cooling rack. I couldn't wait until it had cooled and had a slice straight away.

Quarantine Playlist:

Childish Gambino - 3.15.20

Bonobo - 'Blacksands', 'North Borders' and 'Days to Come' (This is great ambience music, very calming and never fails to put me in a good headspace, also great for essay writing or when you need to focus).

J. Balvin - Colores (This is reggaeton, but don't let that put you off. I would really recommend it for lifting your mood, my favourite is 'Gris').