Description
This really easy family recipe banana bread just relies on the basics: ripe bananas, brown sugar and buttermilk to create the perfect tender, flavourful crumb. Feel free to add chopped nuts, dried fruit or chocolate chips if that’s the way you roll!
Ingredients
Scale
- 100g (4 oz) Unsalted Butter, at room temperature
- 140g (5 oz) Light Muscavado Sugar
- 2 Large Eggs
- 3–4 Large Ripe Bananas
- 150ml (3/4 pint) Buttermilk
- 280g (10 oz) Plain (All Purpose) Flour
- 1 tsp Bicarbonate Soda (Baking Soda)
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven 180 degrees (355 fahrenheit). Butter a 2 lb / 20 x 30cm loaf tin (the larger of the two standard sizes) and line with vertical and horizontal strips of baking parchment.
- Using a wooden spoon or an electric whisk beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
- Fold the buttermilk and 3 of the bananas, lightly mashed with a fork, into the mixture followed by the bicarbonate of soda and the plain flour. Be sure to mix the bicarbonate in well, as if lumps remain in the cake they taste really, really awful!
- Using a rubber spatula scrape the mixture into the tin and smooth out the top. If you’re using the fourth ripe banana peel it and slice it down the middle, laying the two halves cut size up on top of the cake to caramelise.
- Bake the banana bread in the oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Check it after 40 minutes to make sure it is not burning at the corners, this will depend on your oven – in my flat in London it catches around the 1 hour mark, but in my mothers oven it never burns! If it does catch a little, just cover the top with a bit of tin foil to shield the edges.
- Leave in the tin to cool for 10-15 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack and slicing once cool.