Actually Banana Banana Bread

Sorry, didn't take a photo of the bread itself

While the oven was hot from baking the pasty for the Kangaroo and Stout Pie on the weekend I took the opportunity to bake some banana bread using a bunch of very ripe bananas we had lying around.

The big problem I had was that none of the recipes I had used enough bananas, and I've been disappointed recently with café banana breads that have had almost no flavour. So I scoured the Internet to find the recipe that used the most bananas. Some use only two, some only one! So here it is, a recipe by John Barrowman from bbc.co.uk, the four-banana bread!

Ingredients

• 285g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 110g butter, plus extra for greasing
• 225g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 ripe bananas, mashed
• 85ml buttermilk (or normal milk mixed with 1½ tsp lemon juice or vinegar)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC
2. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large mixing bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs, mashed bananas, buttermilk and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar mixture and mix well. Fold in (mix, but don't overmix) the flour mixture.
5. The recipe says to use a 20cm x 12.5cm loaf tin but I used two shallower 20cm tins and I think the lower loaves result in more ... reasonable serving portions (also the baking is much simpler.) Grease the tin(s) if they're not non-stick and pour in the batter.
6. Transfer to the oven and bake for about an hour, or until well-risen and golden-brown.
7. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before serving.

Having recently heard about flour-less banana pancakes I can't help but wonder how far the banana quantity could be pushed...