Moist Banana Bread
Overview
A large batch of banana bread, enriched with chocolate chips and citrus zest. No country is claimed. Banana bread as a category is American, it spread through the United States in the 1930s once chemical raising agents became cheap and household economy made using up blackened fruit a virtue, but this particular version has been through a West African kitchen. Two details give that away. Milk flavour, the concentrated flavouring sold in Nigerian and Ghanaian shops, is not something an American or European recipe would call for. And the contributor's note recommending tigernut milk alongside it points the same way, tigernuts, kunun aya, are a West African staple with their own drink recipe on this site. The quantities are worth reading before you start. Ten bananas, six eggs and three cups of flour make five loaves, not one, which is a great deal of banana bread and explains the unusually large amounts of everything. The method has one ordering problem: it leaves the oven instruction until the second-to-last step, by which point the batter has been sitting. The oven step has been moved to the front, where it belongs.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Set the oven to 350°F / 180°C and grease your loaf tins with oil or butter and a dusting of flour.
- 2
Mash the ripe bananas roughly in a large bowl, some texture is fine and welcome.
- 3
Crack in the eggs and beat them into the mashed banana.
- 4
Pour in the sugar and whisk.
- 5
Whisk in the milk and the melted butter.
- 6
Whisk in the vanilla essence and milk flavour, gently.
- 7
Sift the flour and baking powder over the mixture.
- 8
Fold everything together until just combined, do not beat it.
- 9
Fold through the lemon and orange zest, then the chocolate chips.
- 10
Pour the batter into the prepared tins and tap them lightly on the worktop to release air bubbles and level the tops.
- 11
Top with lemon slices, extra chocolate chips or coconut shavings if you like.
- 12
Bake for about 40 to 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
- 13
Cool in the tins briefly, then on a rack before slicing.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Food Trove- Use bananas that are properly black-spotted. Underripe fruit gives a bland, dry loaf and no amount of sugar compensates.
- Fold rather than beat once the flour is in. Overworking develops gluten and gives you a tough, rubbery crumb.
- Get the oven hot before you start mixing. Batter with baking powder in it begins working immediately and loses lift while it waits.
- This makes five loaves. Halve or quarter everything if you want one, and reduce the baking time accordingly.
- Milk flavour is a West African baking flavouring, sold in African grocers. Leave it out if you cannot find it; the loaf is fine without.
- It keeps well wrapped for several days and freezes properly, which is just as well at this quantity.
Questions cooks ask
Is banana bread a bread or a cake?
Technically it is a quick bread, a loaf leavened with baking powder or bicarbonate of soda rather than yeast, so it needs no proving and no kneading. In terms of sugar content and texture, it sits much closer to cake, which is why the argument keeps recurring. This version, with two cups of sugar and chocolate chips, is firmly at the cake end of the spectrum whatever it is called.
What is milk flavour?
A concentrated flavouring sold widely in Nigerian and Ghanaian shops and used in baking to give a fuller dairy note. It is not the same as milk powder or condensed milk, it is a flavouring essence, used by the teaspoon like vanilla. It is one of the clearest signs this recipe passed through a West African kitchen. If you cannot find it, leave it out; the loaf works perfectly well with just vanilla.
Why does the recipe make so much?
Because it is written for five loaves rather than one, which is worth noticing before you commit ten bananas and six eggs to it. The scale suggests it is meant for a household that bakes for a crowd, or for freezing. All the quantities scale down cleanly, so dividing everything by five gives one standard loaf, just keep an eye on the baking time, which will be shorter for a single tin.
Is this an African recipe?
Banana bread itself is American in origin, spreading through the United States in the 1930s alongside cheap chemical raising agents and Depression-era thrift about using up overripe fruit. This particular version has clearly been through a West African kitchen, the milk flavour and the contributor's suggestion of tigernut milk both point that way. The page sits in Worldwide Recipes under Global, with its URL unchanged.
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