Banana Bread

1 + 3/4 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/3-1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup butter, softened (75gms) - or use half butter plus half oil

1/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

3 extra ripe, brown-skinned bananas (approximately 1 cup, mashed)

Optional:

Chocolate

1/2 cup walnut or pecan pieces, toasted. Macadamia nuts are good too

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Grease and dust loaf pan with flour.

The key with this recipe is not to over mix the batter once the flour has been added. Less stirring makes the banana bread lighter.

Sift or whisk dry ingredients together; set aside. Combine butter and sugar together, beating until smooth (or just gently melt butter in pan, turn off heat then add oil). Beat in eggs (you don’t need to “cream” for this recipe to work). Squish bananas until thoroughly mashed. Stir 1/3 of flour mixture into butter/egg/sugar mixture. Mix lightly. Add 1/3 of mashed bananas. Stir. Repeat, alternating flour and banana, until all ingredients are mixed together. Stir in nuts, ifusing. Spoon into a loaf pan.

Bake for one hour, or one hour and 10 minutes, until the loaf is deep golden brown and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool on a rack.

When adding chocolate, I add a third of the batter to the pan, add bits of chocolate in a layer, add another third of batter, another layer of chocolate and then the rest of the batter so that the chocolate is covered. A few bits might rise to the top, but that’s fine. This helps stop the chocolate from burning on the bottom, sides or the surface.