Banana bread with a peanut butter twist

I’m going to call banana bread a useful cake. Yup, useful cause you know how sometimes you end up with random left over bananas that look less than attractive? You know, the ones that sit lonely in the fruit bowl at the end of the week all brown and yucky? Well this recipe is a great way to use them up. So useful, see?

I do enjoy a slice of banana bread with a cuppa, but Kate had a genius idea, yesterday, to take it to the next level. Peanut butter drizzle.

I have recently developed a love of peanut butter and one of my favourite uses is peanut butter and banana on toast. So this sounded fantastic.

So here is the recipe, and of course you can skip the peanut butter drizzle if you want, the cake is gorgeous on its own.

Ingredients

For one loaf of banana bread

• 100g soft butter
• 175g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 mashed bananas (preferably super ripe)
• 225g self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Splash of milk
• 100g chocolate chips (added extra you can leave these out if you want)

For the drizzle topping

• 125g icing sugar
• 15ml water
• 1 tps peanut butter or peanut butter powder(made separately following instructions)

Let’s get baking

This has to be one of the easiest cake recipes ever, you need zero skill or prior knowledge of baking for this one, so perfect for a wet, miserable Saturday when you can’t get out into the garden and need to be entertained.

Preheat the oven to 180C or 160C for fan. Grease a loaf tin(or line with grease proof paper) and let’s go.

Chuck all your loaf ingredients into the mixer or mixing bowl. I have a stand mixer which does make life so much easier (I do a lot of bread doughs which are very sticky), but this will mix up fine in a big bowl. I added chocolate chips to mine because I had some in the baking cupboard but these are absolutely not essential. I just thought it would work with the whole peanut butter and banana vibe.

Mix this up for about 2 minutes until you have a batter. It will be quite thick but still pourable.

Pour it into your loaf tin and level it off.

Whack it in the oven for an hour, you can check it’s ready by sticking a skewer into the middle and it should come out clean. Leave it in the tin for 5 mins, just to settle, then take it out and leave it on a wire rack to cool.

Now this is gorgeous as it is, so you don’t have to add any kind of icing etc, we were just having some fun.

So for the drizzle, mix your icing sugar and water into a thick paste. If it seems too runny add more icing sugar, if it’s too thick, add more water (a tiny bit). You want this to be runny but thick if that makes any sense. Basically you want it to run down the sides a little.

Then add your peanut butter and give it a really good mix. If you are using peanut butter powder, make this up according to the instructions first and then add it.

Once you have a nice thick but drizzly icing, just drizzle over your loaf. Warning, this will get messy!! And then pop your loaf in the fridge to help the drizzle set.

Serve as big, thick slices. mmmmmmmmmmm

If this deliciousness has you fancying having a go at making your own peanut butter, it’s dead easy.