This morning I woke up with a bee in my bonnet to bake banana bread. In the house that I work at there have been some over ripe bananas piling up over the past few days. I had all the ingredients so there I stood, measuring cups and a big bowl, ready to bake my childhood favourite.
I grew up on a banana farm on the South Coast of Natal and so over ripe bananas were never scarce in our house. My mom worked half day and so we had the luxury of having her around a lot. My farmer dad, never wanting anything to go to waste, encouraged us to use up the bananas and so as a child I learnt to bake banana bread. Every birthday cake that got taken to school was a banana cake… one with blue icing and one with pink icing, original hey! Today I’m going to skip over the colourful icing and just share my banana bread recipe with you, which as I write this is baking in the oven.
Quick and easy and so delicious, here we go…
You want to use 4 over ripe bananas and mash them up in a mixing bowl. To that add 1/3 cup of melted butter and mix together with a wooden spoon. Mix in 1 cup of sugar, 1 egg and 1tsp of vanilla essence. Mix in 1tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt and finally mix in 1 and a half cups of cake flour.
Place mixture into a greased rectangular baking tin and bake at 180 C for about 40mins.
Most ovens vary in temperature so keep checking and when the top is a golden brown or when your knife comes out clean then you know you are good to go. Remove the loaf from the tin and leave to cool.
Slice up for tea with friends or for a quiet afternoon snack. This banana bread is best served with butter. Give it a go… let me know what you think… happy baking 🙂
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