Cinnamon Banana Bread

Today I made another banana bread. I believe it's the 3rd banana bread recipe I've put up in the blog but it is just as good, probably the best one!! It is so moist and dense and full of banana flavour. The crusty is slightly smokey but the inside is so fluffy and soft. It uses yoghurt in the batter which keeps the bread moist and smooth. Yoghurt in bake goods is so good indeed I should use it more often. By the way sour cream would do the same too but it does contain more fat than yoghurt.
I have kept the banana bread plain as it is but you can just as easily mix in chocolate chips, rolled oats, some chopped walnuts or even some chopped apples.

Cinnamon Banana Bread
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup applesauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Large eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 Overripe bananas, mashed (about 1.5 cup)
1/2 cup plain natural yoghurt
1 cup white all-purplse flour
1/2 cup wholemeal plain flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

1) Pre-heat oven to 175 degrees C
2) In a mixing bowl, cream together the oil, applesauce and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix well after each addition. Add vanilla, bananas and yoghurt and combine well.
3) In a separate mixing bowl, sift together the flour, wheat germ, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Make a well in the centre and pour in the wet ingredients. Gentle fold the mixture until the dry ingredients are just incorporated. Be careful not to overmix.
4) Pour batter into a lined or silicon loaf tin and smooth the top. Bake for about 60 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out on a wire rack to finish cooling.The batter will remain slightly lumpy. Don't overmix or you'll get tough instead fluffy bread.


I have officially become one of those people who like to browse around cookware stores. Today I went to DFO hoping to do some trans-seasonal shopping. Instead of winter clothes, I ended up getting a baking dish and a kitchen scale! It's one of those small mechanical scale that looks just like the one we have at home. But I really need a kitchen scale though - I am sick of having to convert measurements from weight to cups everytime I use a recipe written by a British cook!

Marbled chocolate & banana bread

Bananas have been so cheap lately I can't help but get a bunch whenever I walk past the supermarket. I still remember a few years ago they were once almost $10 per kilos because of a hurricane that had destroyed most of the banana crop. It is funny how the price of something as basic as fruits can fluctuate that much.
I have always liked my bananas a bit unripe - just before they start turning black and when they still have a little bit of crunchy and bite in them. As soon as black dots start appearing on the peel I find them unappetizing. That is, of course, except when I bake them with. These bananas were so ripe in fact when I took them out of the plastic bag I saw a tiny bit of mould starting to grow on the end of them. Pretty gross I know. But I decided they were just on the skin and chose to ignore them. It could be a health hazard but so far I feel fine after eating two large slices in the afternoon.In fact this banana bread is so good I could finish the entire loaf. This is the first marbled cake/bread I have made and I reckoned it looked quite pretty, at least from the outside. And I have also made buttermilk from milk and lemon juice for the first time. Simply add 1 tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar into 1 cup of milk and let it stand for 5-10 minutes and that can be used as sour milk. Alternatively sour cream or plain natural yoghurt is fine too.

Recipe adopted from So Good and Tasty
1 cup plain flour
3/4 cup wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sour milk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup ripe banana, mashedchoc chip
1 tbsp dark chocolate, chopped
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

1) Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Line a 9-inch loaf tin
2) In a mixing bowl, sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon together. Set aside.
3) Cream sugar and oil together. Mix in buttermilk. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the mashed bananas, vanilla and choc chips. Stir to combine.
4) Make a well in the dry ingredients and fold in the wet mixture until just combined. Divide the batter in halves. Add in cocoa powder and chopped dark chocolate in one half of the batter and mix until combined. Do not overmix or the bread can become tough.
5) Alternatively, add the plain and the chocolate batter into the loaf tin. Run a knife through the layers to create a swirl pattern.
6) Bake for approximately 50 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a cake tester. Cool in tin for 10 minutes. Remove from tin and cool completely on wire rack. Enjoy!

Sour milk made with 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 tbsp lemon juice.
It's used in a lot of cake and muffin recipes to make the finish product lighter and fluffier.

Plain and chocolate batter

Banana Orange & Choc Chip Cake

So what's the difference between a banana cake and a banana bread loaf? Apparently it's the icing. And I think the cake is meant to be sweeter than the bread, or at least that's how I would make it. But since I have never been a fan of icing, I improvised and made a banana cake sans icing. This is based on a recipe called Banana & Lime Cake from the book Easy Baking.

Banana, Orange & Choc Chip Cake

1.5 cup plain flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
small pinch of salt
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp grated orange rind
3 small bananas, mashed with ~2 tbsp orange juice
1 egg
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup applesauce
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp ground cinnamon
choc chips

1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Line cake tin with baking paper
2) Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Stir in sugar and orange rind. Mix well.
3) Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the egg, banana, olive oil, applesauce, vanilla, cinnamon and choc chips. Mix evenly.
4) Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the surface. Sprinkle extra choc chip over the top if desired. Bake in a preheated oven for 40-45 minutes, or until firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.
5) If you wish, you can prepare a topping by mixing 125g sifted icing sugar and 1-2 tsp orange juice to form a soft but not too running icing. Stir in some grated orange rind and drizzle the icing over the cake while it is still warm.

This cake is quite a dense and filling one, probably due to the amount of bananas. (I already feel satisfied after eating one slice!!) They also help keep the cake moist, despite the reduced amount of oil. Next time I would probably use the rind from a whole orange and more orange juice as the flavour needs to be a bit stronger to cut through all that banana richness. Overall, another easy and delicious recipe :P