Banana Bread

Its slightly strange for me that my first food post would be one about baking. I came late to baking and tend to be much more a savoury person than sweet so  baking held very little interest for me…that was until 2 major events in my life..the first was having children who seem to have a never ending love of sweet things and the other was getting hens. All of a sudden we had a glut of the most gorgeous free range eggs and I had to find a way of using them up so I started baking. I still don’t bake a huge amount but I have come to really enjoy it.
I would love to say that I enjoy baking with my children but to be honest the mess it makes drives me crazy, I do try to look past the mess but at this stage I find that if I can do all the prep and early work on my own then i am happy to let them help with filling the cases,icing etc and the all important licking of the spoon and it is a compromise that seems to work.
I came home from work this evening to find some bananas looking decidedly brown so in light of the fact that the kids wont eat bananas that are black on the outside and because I hate waste I said I’d make some banana bread, its not too sweet and can be a good post school pick me up to keep the kids going till dinner. I use the Avoca recipe and I find it great, lovely and moist and although it looks so dry in the making of it the bananas release so much moisture its important to have faith and it will come right.

225g/8oz plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
110g/4oz caster sugar
1 egg beaten
3 oz melted butter
few drops vanilla essence/extract
65g/2 1/2oz pecan nuts
4 medium ripe bananas mashed

Sift the flour salt baking powder and cinnamon into a bowl and stir in sugar.
Mix in the butter, egg and vanilla, don’t beat. Fold in bananas and pecan nuts with a fork.
Spoon into a lined loaf tin and bake in preheated oven at 180 for 40 -50 mins or until top springs back when pushed gently with your finger.
Leave in tin for 10 mins then turn out onto wire rack to cool.