Cooking just for fun!

Yesterday, I made really good banana bread. This derived from a hunger to do something more fun. I didn’t have a recipe that I took shopping. Instead, the baby and I went to South Melbourne market, and I brought things that I thought would probably go into banana bread. Bananas, obviously, and very ripe ones at that, at only 99c per kilo; flour – I chose organic stone-ground wholemeal self raising flour, and purchased 500grams of it; some beautiful Australian seedless raisins, big, plump and as dark as the night; and raw walnuts. I figured that we would have the rest of anything that I might need at home. I also brought a couple of free-range chooks for Friday, and some apples and plums for a new fruit cup.

I got home, the baby having fallen asleep in the car, and looked up recipes for banana bread on the internet, having failed to find one in any of the major cookbooks that we own. I ended up fusing a few different recipes, and this was the outcome:

Ingredients for 2 loaves of banana bread:

8 (approx.) very ripe bananas.
3.5 cups of wholemeal self raising flour.
1.5 cups dark brown sugar
3 beaten eggs
150g mixture oil or melted butter.
Handful or three of raisins
Handful or three of Walnuts (ground, or grind yourself)
Splash and a bit more balsamic vinegar (or lime or lemon).

Method

Mix the sugar and oil together until light. Add the eggs slowly with motor of a mixer running, and mix together in a mixer.
Add flour into mixer and continue to mix together. Splash in vinegar and integrate well into mixture.
Divide mixture between 2 loaf or cake tins. Mash bananas and add together with raisins and ground walnuts, then divide between cake tins and fold into loaves.


The cooking posed some problems. One recipe suggested 2 hours at 160 degrees, another 45 minutes at 170 degrees. I went with the higher temperature, however the top cooked before the inside (that always happens to me), so I covered the loaves with silver foil, turned the heat down, and left for another hour and a bit.

I cooled them on wire racks, and between Babe getting home,and we going to bed 7/8 of one of the loaves went. It was good plain, and also with jam. The baby loved it too, and when she held some out for me to taste, as she is prone to do generously, I tried it. I would usually only pretend to take her food. I don’t think she noticed. We have put the other one away for desert on Friday we created room in the freezer). We will serve it with vanilla ice-cream.