Banana loaf

Today's blog posts are brought to you by over-ripe bananas. Yes, they were starting to pile up, so some baking was called for.

I was looking for a recipe for banana loaf and found one on this cool site, Blokes Who Bake. Yes, that's right - a baking site for kiwi blokes. The instructions are short and to the point. For example, "You can chuck nuts in if you want". Indeed! The banana loaf recipe worked quite well. It needed a bit longer in the oven as the outside was cooked but the inside was still a little soggy. Oh, and it rose. And rose. And rose.

Banana loaf

Ingredients

• 75 g sour cream
• 1 t baking soda
• 125 g butter at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 large mashed bananas
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1/2 t baking powder

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 22 cm long loaf tin.
2. Combine the sour cream and baking soda in a small bowl. Cream the butter and sugar in a separate large bowl. Beat in eggs, bananas and sour cream mixture with an electric beater. Sift in flour and baking powder and stir it all through.
3. Tip the mixture into your loaf tin.
4. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer comes cleanly from the loaf. Cool 10 minutes in pan. Turn loaf out onto rack and cool completely.

Extras

• You can add nuts to the recipe if that floats your boat. (I added some walnuts.)
• Ice it with a citrus icing. (I've left it un-iced, but even that was too tempting for my 2 year old nephew, who started up a litany of "cake, cake" as soon as he spotted it!)

Banana loaf