After 6 weeks in lockdown, I have finally crumbled and baked my first banana bread today. Unofficially the official food of the COVID-19 pandemic, banana bread bakers have cleared the shop isles of every supermarket in town to bake their own variation of this delicious salty but sweet pandemic panic food.
As staying home means staying safe, I didn’t want to go to the shops to buy fancy ingredients and decided to bake an easy banana bread with the staples I had, and you sure will have, tucked away somewhere in the pantry.
Ingredients:
For this easy banana bread, you will need:
- 1/2 cup butter or margarine, at room temperature
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 3 small eggs, at room temperature
- 2 cups cake flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4-5 medium size very ripe bananas
Method:
Once you have all your ingredients ready, follow these simple steps:
- Preheat your oven to 180°C.
- Grease a bread tin with a bit of butter and line it with brown baking paper.
- Mix the butter, sugar and vanilla essence together into a thick cream.
- Add the eggs, one at at time, and beat it all together and mix well.
- Sift the dry ingredients (salt, baking powder and cake flour) into the egg mixture and mix well.
- Mash the bananas as fine as you can and add it to the mixture.
- Blend the entire mixture well and turn it out into the lined tine.
- Bake for 1 hour or until a test pen comes out completely clean from the middle of the bread.
- Leave it on a cooling rack inside the tin for 10 minutes to cool down.
- Remove it from the tin, slice and enjoy!
Remember that this recipe is a pretty basic one as going to the shops for extras is not a good idea right now. However, if you do feel a little indulgent and you have them at hand, feel free to add some walnuts, pecan nuts and coconut shavings or even melt a bit of peanut butter and pour it over once the bread is cooling.
If banana bread is not your thing but you still feel the urge to do some panic baking, why not try my super easy recipe for a delicious ciabatta bread that you can find here.
If you would like to see more pictures of my baking adventures or find great recipes, please visit me on Pinterest at @LuzanneFletcher and follow me on Instagram at @luzanne_f where you can DM me a picture of your home made banana bread!
