Nigella Lawson’s Banana Bread
Nothing beats a fresh batch of banana bread, and this easy recipe by Nigella Lawson uses rum-soaked raisins for a delightful fruity touch.
Introduction
This is the first recipe anyone hesitant about baking should try: it’s fabulously easy and fills the kitchen with that aromatic fug which is the natural atmospheric setting for the domestic goddess. There are countless recipes for banana bread: this one is adapted from one of my favourite books, the one I read lying on the sofa to recover from yet another long, modern, stressed-out day, Jim Fobel’s Old-fashioned Baking Book: Recipes from an American Childhood. If you’re thinking about giving this cake to children, don’t worry, the alcohol doesn’t pervade: you just end up with stickily, aromatically swollen fruit.
Ingredients
| 100g | sultanas |
| 75ml | bourbon or dark rum |
| 175g | plain flour |
| 2 tsp | baking powder |
| ½ tsp | bicarbonate of soda |
| ½ tsp | salt |
| 125g | unsalted butter, melted |
| 150g | sugar |
| 2 large | eggs |
| 4 small | very ripe bananas (about 300g weighed without skin), mashed |
| 60g | chopped walnuts |
| 1 tsp | vanilla extract |
Essential kit
You will need: a 23 x 13 x 7cm loaf tin, buttered and floured or with a paper insert.
Method
Put the sultanas and rum or bourbon in a smallish saucepan and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat, cover and leave for an hour if you can, or until the sultanas have absorbed most of the liquid, then drain.
Preheat the oven to 170°C/gas mark 3 and get started on the rest. Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a medium-sized bowl and, using your hands or a wooden spoon, combine well. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Then, with your wooden spoon, stir in the walnuts, drained sultanas and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each bit. Scrape into the loaf tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1–1¾ hours. When it’s ready, an inserted toothpick or fine skewer should come out cleanish. Leave in the tin on a rack to cool, and eat thickly or thinly sliced, as you prefer.
VARIATION
I haven’t done a tremendous amount of fiddling with this, but I did once make it, for friends who are more chocolate-crazed than I am, by replacing 25g of the flour with good cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate) and adding 100g of dark chocolate, cut up into smallish chunks. And you could just as easily use the chocolate chips sold in the baking aisle of supermarkets.
Reviews
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