Banana Nut Bread

I'm sure you remember the awesome banana bread loaf pan I bought from America. As I had 3 sad looking bananas sitting on the counter, I thought I'd put them to good use by making banana bread. I decided to use the recipe that accompanied the pan with some minor changes. Sadly, the banana bread was very dry and not very "banana-ey" so I won't be making this again in a hurry or at least without making significant changes.  Interestingly enough the people who don't really like bananas quite liked this bread probably because the banana taste was mild and the texture was fairly dry and solid (It's the mushiness of the banana that tends to put people off) Personally I like a really moist banana bread full of banana flavour. I am still in love with the pan so I'm sure you will see it again and again especially since I love baking with bananas :)

As it's B for bananas, I'm sending this to AlphaBakes hosted by myself this month and co-hosted by Caroline from Caroline Makes on alternate months. If you haven't made your AlphaBakes entry, there's a few days left to enter (25th April) so get baking and blogging!

 Simple recipe - mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients 

 not quite enough to fill to the top

 but it rose a fair bit which required trimming

 I still love the detail on the pan 

Recipe from NordicWare

330g plain flour

120g sugar (this is the reduced amount I used)

3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (I used 1/2)

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (I used 1/2)

70g chopped walnuts, toasted - I used chopped mixed nuts 

3-4 ripe bananas

1/3 cup plain yoghurt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

7 tablespoons butter, melted (I used 1/4 cup vegetable oil)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.
• Stir in the nuts and set aside. 
• Ina small bowl, mix the mashed bananas, yoghurt, eggs, butter and vanilla.
• Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined.
• Spoon the batter into the pan and bake for 55-65 minutes (I recommend checking at 45 minutes)
• Cool for 5 minutes in the pan then turn out to a wire rack to cool completely.