Here's the thing about my relationship with banana bread. I hate bananas. I hate banana flavoured things like banana ice cream/sweets. Yet I LOVE banana bread. I think it started with our local coffee shop serving this incredible banana and pecan loaf that I've become addicted to - warmed up, as an occasional mid morning snack if I'm meeting a friend for coffee there. It's vegan so it doesn't feel tooo unhealthy. And to me, it just tastes like heaven, even though I don't like bananas?! And since entering this second trimester of pregnancy, now that I'm out of that savoury sausage roll, cheese or pickled onion weird craving stage, all I've wanted everyday is banana bread. Or some kind of soft, homemade cake of some kind. Before we went to California, my spending on cake at a coffee shop each morning was getting ridiculous. We then went to California and it didn't get much better, either hunting out banana peanut butter chocolate chip cake out there {amazing} or wanting a cookie of some type everyday. When I got home, I vowed to actually make my own banana bread at long last. So that's how I discovered this recipe. And I feel like it will become a weekly bake in our house, until I have the baby and realise I probably don't have a good excuse to just want cake all the time anymore. You probably make banana bread allll the time but this was my very first time in making it. I didn't even like peeling the bananas {yuk} but I did enjoy eating it afterwards. There are a million recipes online but I liked the look of this one as it was for one bowl, and didn't require any fancy ingredients.

I took this to a friend's coffee catch up last week, cutting a slice before I went just to test it - which by the way if you want to do this, you can cover it up by wrapping it in baking paper and tying it with some pretty ribbon. But I think it's time I made another, and maybe slice and put it in the freezer this time so I can quickly defrost a bit whenever I feel like it. And it has bananas in, so it's basically one of your five a day, right?! 

I used this recipe, which I've adapted slightly below here;

You will need {for one loaf sized tin}

- 3 ripe bananas {or if yours aren't super ripe, either pop them in the oven for 10 mins or microwave them. You can also use frozen bananas if you've got mushy bananas going over}

- 1/3 cup melted butter

- 1/2 cup sugar

- 1 large egg, lightly beaten

- 1tsp vanilla extract

- 1 tsp baking soda {I forgot this was an american recipe so put baking powder in before realising they probably meant bicarb of soda! So just used half and half}

- pinch of salt

- 1 1/2cups plain flour

- 1/2 cup chocolate chips {I used more than this as was excited to have brought home lots of Trader Joes' jumbo choc chips. If using English choc chips, I'd go for chunks to make them bigger and also I really love chocolatey banana bread}

- I added a tablespoon of peanut butter

1. Preheat your oven to 180c and line a loaf tin {around 8 x 5 inch}

2. In a large bowl, mash the bananas until completely smooth. Stir in the melted butter until smooth.

3. Add the sugar, egg, vanilla, baking powder, salt and flour and stir until the batter is thick and combined. Fold in the chocolate chips and then spoon the batter into the prepared loaf tin.

4. Bake for 20 minutes, the original recipe said 50 minutes but I found mine was done after 20 minutes, it probably depends on your size/shape of tin so I'd set an alarm for 15 minutes and just keep checking it. Remember that a cake is done with a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool on a rack. 

It looks a little pale here. But was SO yummy.

Best eaten warm!

Would love to hear your favourite banana bread recipes, as long as they're not tooo banana-ery ;).

R <3 xx