CHOCOLATE BANANA BREAD

Arabella has been nagging me for ages to bake a banana bread - it is not something I would normally ever eat but I figured I should give it a go as it's basically fruit, right? This is a recipe from Fay Ripley's second cook book and it took about 20 minutes to prepare and an hour to cook.

Ingredients for 8 slices:

130g butter, softened
150g light brown soft sugar
3 ripe bananas (about 300g), peeled and mashed
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large free-range eggs
250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
150g dark or milk chocolate, broken into chunks (I used milk)
3 tbsp milk

Preheat the oven to 180 C / 160 C fan / gas mark 4. Butter or line the loaf tin with baking parchment.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until fluffy. I used my whisk for this as my butter wasn't really soft enough.

Add the mashed bananas, vanilla and eggs and whisk together. I obviously wasn't reading the recipe properly as I didn't mash the bananas before I put them in the bowl which made things more difficult….but not impossible!

Sift in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and mix in well.

Fold in the chocolate chunks and milk until combined.

Pour the lot into the lined tine and bake for 50-60 minutes, until risen and golden and a skewer inserted into the bread comes out clean.

Cool slightly in the tin and then serve warm if possible (although it tastes absolutely delicious cold as well).

As I said I have never been a fan of banana bread however I am now fully converted - this was amazing, so moist and tasty and I adored the soft chunks of chocolate. Arabella decided it was too "banana-ey" and so I polished the whole lot off with glee. A real success and perfect for breakfast, afternoon tea and all the time in between!