So Mark is putting up with the fruit loaves but he did ask if I could find one with chocolate in it. No sooner said than done! Chocolate and bananas are good bedfellows, anyway, so it should be good. I found a recipe, on line-another of those UK recipes in grams only (I really recommend an electric scale, they are quite cheap really), using self-raising flour and golden caster sugar. I’ve never seen golden caster sugar here, but I had some brilliant yellow sugar in the pantry and I thought that might work ok. We would see.
Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
| 140 g self-raising flour |
| 140 g brilliant yellow sugar* |
| 140 g softened unsalted butter |
| 1 tsp baking powder |
| pinch salt |
| 3 ripe bananas, mashed |
| 2 large eggs, beaten |
| 1 tsp vanilla extract |
| 100 g chocolate chips** |
*recipe states golden caster sugar
**I used milk chocolate chips
My butter was a bit hard, so I used an old trick to soften it. I filled a glass jug with boiling water, tipped it out again and then popped in my wrapped butter. It worked perfectly.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F/ 325 ˚F convection/180˚C/160 ˚C fan/Gas 4
Grease a suitable loaf tin -900g/2lb. Line with parchment, if preferred.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This was probably a bit harder to do as the sugar, although fine, wasn’t the superfine state of caster sugar. It did go well in the end, though.
Mix the vanilla with the eggs. Add the eggs to the butter mixture, in portions, beating after each addition.
Fold in the flour, baking powder, salt and bananas. Fold in most of the chocolate chips, reserving a handful. I found a silicone spatula to be the perfect tool for this.
Transfer to the prepared loaf tin. Smooth the top and sprinkle with remaining chocolate chips.
Bake, 50 minutes, or until well-risen and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Keep an eye on it as mine baked quite fast and was ready about 45 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.
A tasty bread, with pieces of banana and the chocolate chips still discrete in the texture. Mark likes his buttered. It would also work well with semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips, for a more chocolatey hit. The brilliant yellow sugar seemed to have been a good alternative for golden caster sugar, providing a very slight molasses taste. Ordinary sugar would probably work, too, although the colour of the bread would be paler.
The Pudding Queen 