My weekly shop almost always includes a bunch of bananas. I can’t tell you why they are a regular item that my online orders prompt me if they don’t get into the basket before checking out. Mostly we eat bananas at breakfast with muesli or as a snack with yoghurt and seeds. But some weeks we just don’t get through even 5 bananas, they don’t get eaten and before you know it, the skins are turning and you know the flesh is not so good for eating. They take on a kind of woolly texture that even a banana split still can’t entice. At this point, I turn to the banana bread. I know, I know, during 2020, we all made loaf after loaf of banana bread, vegan, gluten free, Keto, an apothecary style mix of flours (as we struggled to get plain or SR), with or without chocolate, etc. The nation was awash with banana bread recipes and you certainly don’t need ANOTHER one…. But today, I was staring at the fruit plate and came up with this little number with a chocolate and soured cream icing topping!
2 ripe bananas
150g self raising flour
100g soft brown sugar
100g chopped skin on almonds* (because I didn’t have any walnuts)
2 large eggs
100g unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
200g dark chocolate minimum 70% cocoa solids
200g full fat soured cream
*I bashed these almonds between in a greaseproof paper folded in half, using a meat tenderiser to bash the nuts actually. You can use the flat side of a saucepan, too. Much easier than chopping. The texture should be coarse and even.
– Preheat the oven to 160c, take a 2Ib loaf tin, and line it with a piece of greaseproof paper, best to let the long sides overhang so you can lift the cake out when it is cooked. Set aside.
– Melt the butter in a small saucepan. After it has melted, I let it cook a little longer so that it took on a digestive biscuit aroma. This is brown butter, but please watch it and don’t walk away as it can burn very quickly. Remove from the heat and decant into a mixing bowl to stop the cooking, let it cool a little.
– Peel the bananas and mash them with a fork, in a small bowl beat the eggs. In the mixing bowl with the melted butter, add the mashed bananas, chopped almonds, beaten eggs and soft brown sugar, mix well. Sift in the self raising flour and salt then fold in, stop when there are no white bits left. Check the consistency, it should drop from the spoon without much coaxing, i.e. not stuck on and you have to flick it off! If it is, add a tablespoon of milk, mix and try again.
– Pour this into the lined loaf tin and place it in the preheated oven on the middle rack and bake for about 40 minutes. I checked mine after 36 minutes and add a few more. Afterwards, let it cool for a couple of minutes in the tin, then lift it out and cool on a wire rack. This is important, so that the cake doesn’t stick in the tin or sweat in it.
– In a small saucepan with a couple of inches of water heat to a bare simmer. Take a heatproof bowl, add the broken up chocolate in it and put it on top of the saucepan. Don’t let the water touch the bottom of the bowl and make sure the water doesn’t boil. This is called Bain Marie, a water bath. Allow the chocolate to melt slowly, stir it occasionally. Once it has fully melted, remove the bowl from the heat and let it cool down a bit. Stir in a teaspoon of caster sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. When the mixture is lukewarm, stir in the soured cream, taste if you need a little more caster sugar. It will thicken on cooling and ready for the now cold cake. Don’t ice the cake if it is still warm as the heat can melt the icing. Slice and enjoy. Best to keep the cake in the fridge but I don’t think it will last very long! Bonus: the chilled icing topping takes on a chocolate truffle texture, delish 🙂
PS Bananas actually freeze very well. Peel and cut them in large chunks, before putting them into freezer bags. A few ideas to use these frozen fruit: you can use the chunks from frozen to make smoothies, or push a bamboo skewer through the centre of a whole peeled banana, freeze as before then dip or drizzle them in melted chocolate and top with chopped nuts as an ice lolly or whizz them up as an “ice cream”, dairy free and vegan. To make the ice cream more interesting, whizz the frozen bananas with a spoonful of peanut better, and sandwich the mixture between two chocolate cookies.
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