It’s all about Banana Bread today. 

National Bread Week is running between Sunday October 9th and Saturday October 15th so naturally I have a banana bread recipe to hand to share.  You can also find a whole load of bread inspiration over at the National Bread Week website.

Banana bread is a very simple, yet delicious bread which you can easily make at home with just a few ingredients.

Here’s what you will need:

250g of self-raising flour

150 grams of granulated white sugar

3 or 4 ripe bananas

125g of butter

2 large free-range eggs (3 if they are smaller)

1 of teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons of honey

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence (optional)

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Steps:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180C or 350F.

2. Put your butter onto a low heat to melt while you start preparing the rest of the ingredients.

3. In a bowl combine the flour, sugar and salt. Which just means throw them in and mix them together with a spatula.

4. Mash up your bananas using a fork ready for the next step.

5. In another bowl combine the eggs, vanilla extract and melted butter and whisk gently together. The vanilla extract is optional but acts to enhance the flavours around it.

6. Add the mashed bananas, and egg, butter and vanilla extract mixture into the bowl containing the flour, sugar and salt. At this point you can also squeeze in your honey so it gets mixed through evenly.

7. Fold the ingredients together until you get a lumpy looking batter. It does not need to be smooth to make banana bread.

8. Add in your cinnamon and mix it through. You can add more than 1 teaspoon if you quite like the taste of cinnamon, but so much that you overpower the banana taste.

9. Next you can either line your loaf tin with baking parchment or grease the sides and bottom with butter. I opted for the parchment. The mixture allowed me to fill two of these small tins about half way, making to loaves of banana bread.

10. Bake in the oven, middle shelf, for about 40 minutes, or until well risen and golden brown. To check if its cooked through you can stick a skewer into the middle of the loaf. If it comes out clean it indicates its cooked.  If not you can leave for a few more minutes then check again.

11. Once cooked allow it to cool and the parchment will easily peel off.  The loaf should be soft and moist and very easy to cut into slices.

12. EAT IT.

Notes: you could also add in some walnuts or pecans to your banana bread. If you wish to do so, chop them roughly and mix them through at step 8 above.