Banana Bread with Toasted Walnuts and Dark Chocolate

Believe it or not, this recipe comes from a leaflet I found in the Guardian called 'quick and healthy snacks'. To me that says 'eat me'. It's a booklet done by Tomasina Miers, who just so happens to have a very wonderful Mexican restaurant (make that plural) in London and very appetising Mexican cook book. It turns out she is also a dab hand at 'quick and healthy snacks'. Banana bread is very important to me, so I'm not about to share a recipe with you that I think is under par. For the best part of my life I have loathed the banana, except in 'bread' form. As it so happens I now love banana, so the bread form is even more enticing to me. Add some dark chocolate and toasted walnuts and you have a grown up version that lasts for days and certainly fills the elevenses slot without too much guilt. The only change I have made is to add more banana, I tend to use three when Tomasina's recipe calls for only 2 medium bananas, in weight: 250g. It's great for packed lunches as well as tea time. Just don't give it to someone with an allergy to nuts.

Ingredients:


125g softened, unsalted butter

120ml semi-skimmed milk

1 tsp lemon juice

150g walnuts

250g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

A couple of pinches of ground allspice

200g dark brown soft sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

3 very ripe bananas roughly mashed

A few drops of vanilla essence

150g 70% dark chocolate, roughly chopped

2 small loaf tins*

Preheat the oven to 180C and leave the butter out to soften. Mix the milk with the lemon juice and leave aside (this will curdle, and give it thickness). If you have good non-stick tins then all you need to do is line the bottoms with some parchment paper, keep the parchment in place with some dabs of butter.




Put the walnuts on a baking tray and warm through the oven until they are lightly toasted, about 5-8 mins then leave to cool. Sift the dry ingredients - flour, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and allspice - into a bowl. In another, larger, bowl, cream the butter and half the sugar until pale, light and fluffy. I am still of the wooden spoon school so just make sure you're arms are up to it.




Gradually add the eggs and a tablespoon of the flour mixture, then beat in the rest of the sugar, tha bananas and the vanilla essence. Best the remaining dry ingredients into the mixture adding the milk bit by bit.




Roughly chop the walnuts and fold into the mixture with the chocolate. Pour into the loaf tins and bake in the oven for 50 minutes or until a metal skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tins for 10 minutes then turn out of the tins on to metal racks.




*I only have one small loaf tin so I split the batter into the loaf tin and into muffin trays. When you are using baking soda or power you can't really let the mixture sit for over an hour while one tin bakes. Take the muffins out (depending on size of muffins) after 20-25 or so mins.