Quarantine Diaries - Banana Bread

So..... hello? It's been three years since my last blog post and what better time to re-launch this than now! I live in Spain, which is currently the third country with the most number of cases of this horrible Coronavirus. This has been the third week of confinement for us, which means 3 weeks of online school and not leaving the house. I finally decided to make something positive out of this time, which is to start documenting what I bake again. i can't promise consistency in these posts but I will be uploading anything I bake during these times of confinement. 

Some activities I have been doing during this quarantine are: baking (of course), playing table tennis, taking online lessons and trying to exercise as much as possible (our dance teacher is very kindly giving us online video lessons, as we have our last dance exam ever this summer).

Due to my ongoing obsession with Bon Appétit and their Test Kitchen videos on YouTube, I decided to try one of their classic recipes, banana bread. I tweaked it a bit, as I have made it many times, so here is my version of their recipe:

-       2 cups of all-purpose flour

-       1 + ½ teaspoons of baking soda

-       ¾ teaspoon of salt

-       3 large room temp. eggs

-       1 cup white sugar

-       ½ cups brown sugar + some for sprinkling

-       2 large ripe bananas (blackened in the oven)

-       ¾ cup vegetable oil

-       1 cup chopped walnuts

-       150g roughly chopped 75% chocolate

 Preheat your oven to 200 °C

All wet ingredients go into a big bowl. Mix thoroughly until no egg streaks remain.

Sugar is added and mixed in quickly.

All the dry ingredients are sieved into the bowl of wet ingredients. You can sieve directly into the bowl, without having to use another bowl for the dry ingredients, as this will save up  cleaning up another bowl.  

Add the mix-ins before incorporating the flower, as this will make the nuts and chocolate not sink to the bottom of the dough. Gently fold in all the ingredients with a rubber spatula.  

Pour the dough into a non-stick silicone loaf mould. Next sprinkle some brown sugar on top, this will make for a crackly crust on top.   

This will go into the oven for around 30-35 minutes. Of course this varies with each oven, so check on it after the 30 minute mark.

Mine was done after around 35 minutes. It is perfectly crispy on top and moist on the inside.

Enjoy!

Lucia x