I read in some newspaper lately that an excellent way of practically saving the planet is to make plenty of Banana Bread. Not quite as goofy as it sounds as the following will show. Yesterday I went into my local paper/general store to get my paper and noticed a display of bright green under ripe bananas on a shelf. I said to the boss, “What have you done with the old black ones ?”
“I still have them” says he, “Do you want them?” and he headed out the back to return with a bag full of brown bananas. Knowing me as a half mad chef he refused all payment “You saved me taking them to the dump” and furthermore promised to keep all the soft ones for me in the future.
I went home and made two large (1 kg) loaves of banana bread.
It is (even though I say it myself) delicious and so worthy that it can be eaten without any guilt, despite the incidemce of butter and sugar.
I mean how often can one indulge in such delicious food and save the planet at the same time?

Here is the recipe I use normally, as I was out of walnuts I used a combination of pinenuts and chopped hazelnuts. Not having self raising I added two teaspoons of baking powder to the plain flour and as I was also out of caster sugar I processed some brown sugar until fine and used that.

As you can see it is a very forgiving recipe and doesn’t mind in the least being mucked about.

Babana Bread

225g (8oz.) Self-raising Flour
½ teaspoon of salt
110g (4 oz.) Butter
175g (6 oz.) Castor Sugar
60g (2 oz.) Stem Ginger
60g (2 oz.) Walnuts
2 Eggs
450g (1 lb.) Very ripe Bananas.

Mix the flour with the salt and sugar. Cut the butter into small dice and rub into the flour.
Beat the eggs and then mash up thoroughly with the bananas.
Stir this into the flour mixture.
Dice the stem ginger and roughly chop the walnuts.
Fold these into the mixture.
Line a 1kg loaf tin with some non-stick paper and spoon in the mixture.
Cook at Gas 4 180C 360F for one hour.
When cooked it should be brown on top and moist but not raw in the centre.
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