Totally bananas

You remember that American recipe book that had the recipe for the clafoutis that it took me four attempts to get to work properly?

It also had one for a banana loaf, which was, rather mysteriously, filed under "breakfast". (Indeed, a surprising amount of things we'd only ever have for tea in this country are also filed under "breakfast". Americans can apparently cope with quite a lot of sugar first thing in the morning, and fair play to them; I, on the other hand, can't.) And I thought, oh, banana loaf, what a good idea, I shall make that.

The clafoutis looked innocent enough at first sight. You would see that recipe and not spot any obvious reason why it might not work. This one, though... it had two and a half medium bananas, so let's say three small ones; and to go with that it had a mere 50 g of flour and 20 g of ground almonds. (Actually it said "almond flour", which I originally assumed was American for "ground almonds", but I later discovered that there is, in fact, a difference. Almond flour is ground rather finer, and you can get it in this country, but you usually have to go online for it. However, the ground almonds do give it a little bit of texture that I quite like, so I'm sticking with those.) But, regardless of minor quibbles about exactly how finely you grind your almonds, the weight of your dry ingredients is still less than a third of the weight of your bananas. And I thought "I'm really not sure about this; but the book says it's been tested, so let's try it and see."

Well, the results were... edible. And that's about all I can say for them. Each loaf rose almost to the top of its tin in the air fryer and then collapsed like a burst balloon about thirty seconds after I took it out, leaving a dense, sticky mass which remained unpleasantly damp no matter how long I cooked it. (The one I did for longer did at least have a better flavour.) You couldn't taste the cinnamon at all, either.

I tripled all the dry ingredients, leaving the bananas and oil the same as in the original recipe. (The original loaves weren't quite oily, exactly, because the dampness dominated, but they were still too rich for a proper banana loaf, so I was not going to increase the oil.) Well, I say I tripled them all, but I more than tripled the cinnamon just to give it a fighting chance of coming through. The sugar needed upping a bit to balance that, but not too much, as the original was pretty sweet; so I decided to go with the default for cakes, which is "same amount of sugar as flour". Obviously there are the almonds as well, but bananas are quite sweet, especially the very ripe ones you need for this recipe, so I reckoned the bananas would be enough to sweeten the almonds. And, similarly, the plant milk needed to go up a bit too, but again not too much, since the original batter was very slack. I took an educated guess on that one, combined with the fact that what I had was two 450 g loaf tins, so I needed roughly 900 g of mixture all told. (Note that the recipe calls for almond milk, but I don't always have it in; I have made this recipe with strawberry-flavoured soya drink in an emergency and it works just fine! So any kind of plant milk will give good results.)

The results, I'm happy to say, were entirely satisfactory... for me, at any rate. I don't think they'd suit my sister, who likes her banana cake on the lighter side; but if you're after something fairly dense and very fruity, this recipe will work well for you. And if you want fruitier still, you could add maybe 100 g of raisins (as long as your liners come reasonably high up so it doesn't rise out of the tins). Chocolate chips would also work, as would walnuts if you like a bit of crunch. I tend to like my walnuts savoury rather than sweet, so I'm not a big fan of them in cakes, but if you're a walnut person apparently the trick is to coat them in flour before you add them to the mixture, as this stops them all sinking to the bottom. (I have no idea how it does this, but I am reliably informed that it works.) Another thing to mention is that this recipe freezes exceptionally well, which is really useful if you live on your own like me, because each loaf does six slices so it lasts nearly a week. I leave the loaves in their liners and then just pop them each into a paper bag to go in the freezer; the bags from If You Care are precisely the right size. (I hate the brand name. Talk about guilt-tripping. But they do do very good environmentally friendly kitchen recyclables.)

One final note: I don't normally measure chia seed by volume, but in this case it just happens to be convenient, because you want about 100 ml of chia "egg" in total, so you just put your chia seed into a small container and top it up to 100 ml with water. You can equally well use ground flaxseed; I think the proportions are about the same.

Next up are the chocolate and courgette muffins (also filed under "breakfast"; of course, it's American, so the courgettes are called "zucchini"), which I'll probably be attempting for the first time towards the end of next week. I have ordered wonky organic courgettes specifically for the purpose. And if it comes out right first time, nobody will be more surprised than I!

25 ml chia seed
75 ml water
150 g plain wholemeal flour
60 g ground almonds (or almond flour)
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 rounded tsp baking powder
a good pinch of salt
150 g soft brown sugar
100 ml almond milk (or other plant milk)
2.5 ml pure vanilla extract
60 ml rapeseed oil
3 small/medium bananas, mashed (as ripe as possible)

Line two 450 g loaf tins. Mix the chia seed and water, and allow to stand for 10 - 15 minutes until the mixture thickens, stirring occasionally to mix in any floating seeds.

Mix together the flour, ground almonds, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl, combine the sugar, almond milk, oil, vanilla, bananas, and chia mixture.

Preheat the air fryer to 155 C. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until completely combined.

Divide the batter equally between the two tins, and bake each for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the loaf comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.