my favourite banana bread

It's perfect banana bread weather at the moment, don't you think?

This is my favourite recipe. I've used it over and over again with a few of my own amendments. It's a Donna Hay recipe and the best one I've tried. My favourite thing about it is the hazelnut meal in it. It just makes it that much denser, more wholesome and less cakey than a lot of other ones I've tried.

Here's the recipe:

Banana cinnamon breads

140g butter

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 cups plain four, sifted

3/4 teaspoon baking powder, sifted

1/2 cup hazelnut meal

1/3 cup buttermilk (I've just used normal milk if I haven't any buttermilk and it still works fine)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 large or 2 small bananas, sliced (I also mash 1-2 bananas and mix into the mixture at the end)

melted butter for brushing

demerara sugar for sprinkling (it's worth using this sugar, it's chunkier and more caramel-y than normal sugar)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. Add the egg and beat well. Add the flour, baking powder, hazelnut meal, buttermilk and cinnamon and fold through until smooth.

Grease 6 x 3/4 cup capacity tins. (I don't do this, I just put it all into a loaf tin.) Spoon in the mixture and place the banana slices on top. Brush with the melted butter, sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake for 35 minutes or until golden and cooked when tested with a skewer. Then enjoy!

I always seem to have overripe bananas in the fruit bowl and I make sure there always hazelnut meal in the pantry, just in case I get the hankering for some banana bread, though I have done this with almond meal as well. Not quite the same but still works. 

I love eating this bread any time of the day, but particularly in the mornings with my coffee. Heaven!