Welcome Anika! (And some rather nutty banana bread!)

Hello reader(s)!  We have a new (m.) baker joining the blog today!  Welcome Anika :-)  May your baking days be many and your cakes always rise!

Well, a Sunday wouldn't be a Sunday in my book without the smell of baking enveloping the house.  And so, I felt obliged to bake this morning and, what better to bake when there are numerous over-ripe bananas to use up than banana bread!

The recipe is adapted from Banana Banana Bread from allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

250 g plain flour

1 tsp (5 g) bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp salt

115 g margarine (or butter)

110 g soft brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

Lots of overripe bananas (around 525 g)

100 g (or more) of chopped pecans

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 140 degrees C (fan oven).

2. Grease / line a 9 x 5 inch loaf tin.

3. Cream together the margarine and brown sugar.  Stir in eggs and half to three-quarters of the bananas, mashed.

4. If you want Clare-style banana bread slice the remaining bananas into the mixture and stir.  (If you want more normal banana bread then mash the rest and stir in.)

5. Sift in the flour, soda and salt.

6. Pour into the loaf tin.

7. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden and a toothpick inserted into the spongey bit comes out clean (if you insert it into a chunk of banana it will come out wet!)

8. Cool in the pan for around 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack.