Friday, September 27, 2013

Banana Chocolate Chip Walnut Loaf



I'd been having some trouble getting a banana loaf recipe right, but I've finally got one I'm happy with. Studded with chocolate chips and walnuts, it has a mild banana flavour and it's not very sweet either, so you may want to increase the amount of sugar in the recipe if you want a sweeter cake.

What's more, I used bananas I had frozen a week ago for this recipe. We had some overripe bananas (which are perfect for baking) but I didn't have time to bake with them so I popped them in the freezer. Saturday night I took them out to thaw and used them up Sunday morning. They will blacken further on freezing so don't let that alarm you, they're perfectly fine to bake with. They're a bit watery once they've thawed though so peel the bananas and place them in a strainer for a while to drain the excess liquid. Then mash them up and into the cake batter they go!



Ingredients

3 oz butter
⅓ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1½ cups flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
⅓ cup milk
½ cup mashed banana
⅓ to ½ cup walnuts, chopped
3 tablespoons chocolate chips
½ tsp vanilla 

  1. Preheat the oven to 350⁰F (180⁰C).
  2. Sift together the flour and baking powder and set aside.
  3. Add the butter and sugar to a large mixing bowl and, with an electric mixer, beat together until light and creamy (about 2 minutes).
  4. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix well after adding each one.
  5. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk.
  6. Stir in the mashed banana, chopped walnuts, chocolate chips, and vanilla.
  7. Pour the batter into a greased and lined 8x4-inch loaf pan.
  8. Bake for about 50 minutes.
  9. Remove from the oven, allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn the loaf out onto a wire rack to cool completely.