“Tanned, springy & your kitchen smells like it’s 4PM” Banana Bread

There’s no shortage of Banana Bread recipes available, but in her second guest post, Nellie has honed this one to perfection. Hovering just the right side of the bread/cake divide, not too sweet, but crammed full of walnuts and dark chocolate. The bread is moist but holds together well. It tastes just as good several days later as an hour out of the oven, particularly if toasted with butter. Seems like the perfect recipe to mark the first birthday of this blog!

• 110g butter, soft
• 115g golden caster sugar
• 4 bananas – the blacker the better
• 2 eggs
• 75g buttermilk – or add a squeeze of lemon to whole milk
• 2 tablespoons yoghurt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
• 250g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 100g dark chocolate, broken into 1/2cm chunks
• 100g walnuts, in 1/2 cm pieces

Preheat your oven to 180℃. Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer until fluffy, pale and creamy. Mash the bananas in a bowl with a fork till they’re mushy, then incorporate into the butter mix. Add the eggs. Add in the milk, yoghurt, and vanilla. With a spatula, fold in the dry ingredients. Stop before fully incorporated to add the choccy chunks and walnuts. Pour into a lined loaf tin and bake for 45 mins until tanned, springy and your kitchen smells like it’s 4pm.