Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 4 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 250 g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 150 g light brown sugar
• 115 g butter, melted
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 80 g walnuts, roughly chopped — optional
• ½ tsp salt

Method

1. Melt and mix

   Whisk the melted butter into the sugar.

2. Add the wet

   Beat in the eggs, vanilla and mashed banana. The blacker the bananas the better — underripe fruit gives you a bland, pale loaf.

3. Fold in the dry

   Sift over the flour, bicarb, cinnamon and salt and fold just until no dry flour remains. Beating it smooth develops gluten and makes the crumb tough and rubbery.

4. Bake

   Fold through the walnuts, scrape into a lined 900 g loaf tin and bake at 170°C until a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs. If the top darkens too early, tent it with foil.

   1 h

5. Cool

   Cool in the tin for ten minutes, then turn out. It slices far better once completely cold, and is better still the next day.

   10 min