Banana Chocolate and Walnut Bread

 We eat an awful lot of fruit here in chilly ( mostly wet ) Wales so we nearly always have at least two rather sad looking bananas left lurking in the fruit bowl.... too cotton wooly to eat but too good to throw away. Now I know someone close by who has a slight addiction to banana bread so I think that subliminally I buy too many bananas in the knowledge that there will be a request forthcoming.

I've tried a few recipes along the way but this one ticks all the boxes, the walnuts give it a nice textural crunch and the chocolate gives it a lovely luxurious feel - it's just delicious.

This recipe calls for chocolate chips but I always use a nice dark chocolate bar and chop it roughly,  it doesn't need to be chopped too fine either as I quite like the hit of a nice piece of chocolate

Ingredients

2 Large free range eggs whisked together in a bowl 

1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

125g Softened butter

50g Caster sugar

50g Dark brown sugar

2 large ripe bananas mashed into a bowl

140g Self raising flour

1 Teaspoon baking powder

1 Teaspoon ground cinnamon

100g Chocolate chips ( I used a bar of dark chocolate chopped ) 

50g Walnuts roughly chopped

Preheat oven to Gas mark 4 

Butter a 2lb loaf tin ( I used a square tin ) 

Whisk the eggs together with the vanilla and set aside, mash the bananas and set aside.

Combine eggs and bananas and put to one side.

Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy, add egg and banana mixture slowly and continue to beat - it's worth mentioning at this stage that I have never managed to combine all these ingredients without my mixture splitting. I doesn't matter, this cake always comes out well - every time - don't sweat the splitting!!

Sift in the flour , cinnamon and baking powder, stir in the walnuts and chocolate and pour into your pre buttered tin, place in the middle of your oven and walk away for around 45 minutes or until a skewer poked into the middle of the cake comes out clean. 

This is surprisingly light given the nature of the ingredients, it's a foolproof recipe which I've returned to many times.