Honey Banana Bread

It’s so simple, right? Good old fashioned Banana bread. I make this Honey Banana Bread fairly regularly since it’s become normal practice in our house to buy more bananas than we can eat in a week, hence insuring there will be banana bread on the weekend.

This recipe is real simple and you can add walnuts or a sugary glaze to jazz it up. We eat it as is. Sliced thick, still warm, with some butter.

Ingredients

2 cups self-raising flour
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup butter
2 very ripe bananas
1/2 cup golden sugar
2 lg eggs
6 tbsp honey

Start by pre-heating your oven to 325F. Grease a 2lb loaf tin and line the bottom and up the sides with parchment paper. You’ll thank me for this, it makes getting it out of the tin without falling apart a breeze. Like so…

Put the four and nutmeg into a mixing bowl and add the butter, chopped up into little chunks. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients with you fingers until it is the consistency of breadcrumbs. I use my food processor this because it’s so much faster and keeps the butter colder. Why is this important? When cold butter is rubbed into the flour, it creates flaky pockets of flavor within the mix (which soft, room temperature butter won’t do, it will just get greasy and stick together). When the cold butter hits the oven, the liquids in the butter begins evaporating. Creating moisture, for a tender and light crumb.

Next mash up the bananas and put them in your stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the sugar, eggs and honey and mix on medium/high until everything is really well blended. Then slowly add the four mixture and beat until everything is combined and not too lumpy. You may see little bits of banana but the batter should be fairly smooth. Poor it into your prepped tin and bake for an 1hr to 1hr 15min, checking with a toothpick in the center to come out clean.

Give it about 5 minutes to cool then, using the parchment I told you you’d thank me for, lift it out and set the loaf on a rack to finish cooling before peeling off the parchment.

This bread can also be muffins! Increase the oven temperature to 375F and decrease the bake time to 30 minutes. Be sure to check them often. I topped these walnuts.