Use It Up

Three very manky, over-ripe bananas have been transformed into a Banana Loaf this morning.  It's a lovely recipe from the excellent Rose Elliot (vegetarian recipe writer extraordinaire) and is a fantastic way of using up really black bananas.  You need:

2oz margerine or butter, 2oz dark brown sugar, 2oz golden syrup. Melt these three ingredients together im a pan over a low heat and when liquid add to 8oz self-raising flour, a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt (although I never bother with the salt) which have been mixed together in a bowl.  Stir well, then add one beaten egg and two over-ripe bananas (although I went for over-kill and used all three that were lurking in the fruit bowl today.)   Pour into a greased and floured loaf tin (or in my case an enameled baking dish as I don't have a loaf tin) and bake in the oven for one hour at 180 degrees - although it's probably best to check on it after approx. 50 minutes otherwise it can end up a bit well-done on the top.

This makes a wonderful moist cake which is delicious on it's own, with butter on, or, if it goes a bit stale, as the base for a banana custard trifle (especially if liberally sprinkled with some alcohol!!)

Whilst on the 'use it up' vibe, I whipped up some slightly-out-of-date double cream, blitzed a jar of organic sweet cherries and added both to some ready-made custard to make a cherry fool for pudding this evening.  The jars of Biona organic cherries were 2 for £1.00 in the local farm shop - a fantastic bargain.  (If anyone is in SE Essex, I can highly recommend Barleylands Farm Shop (on the Southend Road between Billericay and Wickford) for some amazing bargains, and at the moment they have tons of Biona organic products at unbelievably cheap prices - and they're not even close to their sell-by dates.)

Comments

[Librariann]

I'm a big fan of the Sophie Dahl banana bread loaf, but she's a bit more generous with the sugar. It's meant to serve six but I can easily get 10 generous slices out of it.

[Itsformybaby]

I love making banana bread. I always freeze any bananas that are over ripe - they go all mushy once they are defrosted but are fine to use in recipes like this, or for fruit smoothies.