Recipe: Banana bread

List of ingredients:

-5 bananas (the riper, the tastier) chopped in 1-inch pieces

-125 g of unsalted butter

-150 g of brown sugar (regular sugar is fine but will alter taste)

-220g of self-rising flour or whole flour

-2 eggs

-1 teaspoon of baking soda

-80 g of chopped walnuts

-300 g of chocolate, chopped coarsely

-1 teaspoon of vanilla extract or 1 vanilla pod

-Some brown sugar to sprinkle on top, before baking

-Some maple syrup and vanilla icecream for serving

Recipe:

1)

Heat up your pan on medium-high heat and put your butter and brown sugar in: wait until it starts boiling to start your caramel and then bring it to a gentle simmer. Add your bannanas, chopped in 1-inch pieces, to the caramel and let it cook for 5 to 10 minutes until your bananas become mush just by stirring them: remember to stir but don't overdo it, otherwise they'll cook slower. The riper the banana, the faster they'll become soft and then mush.

2)

Get a bowl and line it with parchment paper, then, put your caramel-banana mash into the bowl and let it cool for 10 minutes before putting it into the frige. You'll have to refrigerate your mash for 1 hour until it becomes more firm.

3)

Mix all your dry ingredients together in a bowl: your flour, chocolate and walnuts go in. Mix well together so the flour coats entirely the chocolate and the walnuts, otherwise they'll sink to the bottom of your banana mixture when you bake it. Preheat your oven to 180 º celsius, set to fan.

4)

Add a big pinch of salt to your dry ingredients and 1 teaspoon of baking soda, then mix.

5)

After removing your banana mixture from the fridge, add 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract or the seeds of 1 vanilla pod, and mix well.

6)

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix them together.

7)

Put your mixture into a cake tin, be it round or rectangular: sprinkle some extra brown sugar on top to create a crunchy layer on top. Bake your banana mix in the highest rack of your oven, for 45 minutes to 1 hour. You'll know your cake is ready when you can stick a knife in and it comes out clean.

Serving:

Preferably, cut 1 to 1 1/2 inch pieces of banana bread, otherwise it will crumble and fall apart. You should also serve your dessert warm, but it's also good cold on its way at a picnic or in a low-cost date. At home, for a nice, fancy dinner, you can serve your banana bread slice with a scoop of icecream and a sprig of mint on top. You can also pair it your icecream with maple syrup or just remove the whole icecream altogether and just add maple syrup.

My choice: a nice, thickly slice of lukewarm banana bread with a quenelle of icecream, a sprig of mint and some more chopped walnuts to decorate, while you add a splash of maple syrup on top.

Good baking! Please don't cut or burn yourself: I warned you, you clumsy buttface.