Chocolate and Walnut Banana Bread

When I lived at home, my mum used to make banana bread a lot. Recently, I’ve really been craving it and unfortunately, she’s a bit too far away for me to pop round for some… So, I made some myself! I had a look at a few different recipes on Pinterest and decided to just kinda wing it. I added some walnuts and dark chocolate because I thought they’d go nicely. Surprisingly… it turned out really well!

Here’s the recipe if you’d like to try it out. I’ve used some dairy free ingredients but obviously you can replace them with whatever you like to use!

Ingredients:

• 100g Flora DF spread (or any butter/margarine of your choice)
• 175g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• a pinch of salt
• a pinch of cinnamon
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 225g self-raising flour
• 2 large ripe bananas
• 2 tablespoons almond milk
• dark chocolate
• walnut pieces

Method: 

Preheat your oven to 180C (355F). I always grease my cake tin at the start too – it means you won’t have to worry about it later.

One thing that’s really important for this recipe is that the bananas are ripe. If they’re not quite there yet, pop them in the oven while it preheats. Leave them in until the skin goes brown. This will make it soooo much easier to use for this recipe and will make it taste even better too!

Wait till your butter has softened and then cream together with the sugar. Add your eggs and vanilla essence to the bowl, then mix until combined. Sieve your dry ingredients into the mixture and fold it all together. Mash your banana in a separate bowl before adding it to the mixture, along with the almond milk. Roughly chop the walnuts and chocolate into small pieces – I used about 75g of dark chocolate and a big handful of walnuts. Once chopped, add them to your bowl and give it one final mix!

Add the mixture to your loaf tin and pop it in the oven for about 50 minutes. It might take a little longer so just keep an eye on it!

If you don’t have a loaf tin, you could easily make banana muffins instead. They’ll take about 20/25 minutes in the oven, so they’re a quicker option too! If you don’t think you’ll eat them all at once, they’re perfect for popping in the freezer. You can take them out and microwave them whenever you want a little snack!

If you do try out my banana bread recipe, be sure to let me know how it goes!

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