For a grey and dreary day...

Banana bread

Making something wonderful is fulfilling enough, but to make something wonderful with produce you’d otherwise throw away gives me a feeling of immeasurable pleasure and smugness. Naturally I never throw away apples past their prime; I’ve been making applesauce since before time began. But now I’ve also found a way to deal with brown bananas (I only eat bananas that are still green around the edges). This banana bread comes courtesy of The Delicious Miss Dahl (initially I seriously underestimated her value in the baking department), and it is glorious. I first made it as a way to use up the brown bananas I had lying around and ever since I keep buying too many bananas, just to make sure I’ve always got some left over at the end of the week.
My addendum: try using different sugars. Dark brown sugar will give you slightly more depth of flavour while light brown will give a treacly sweetness and make the cake more moist and dense.

No matter how you make this cake, it’s easy. However using a food processor really makes it a doddle.

Put 70 grams of butter, an egg, 200 grams of brown sugar, 4 bananas (brown on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside) and a tablespoon of vanilla extract in the bowl and blitz. Add a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt and blitz again. When wet and smooth, pour into a bowl and whisk in 170 grams of flour.
Pour this mixture into a greased tin and bake for an hour at 160 degrees (fan assisted oven).

Eat and prepare to repeat this process. A lot.

disembowelment