Ingredients
- Cooking time: 40 minutes
- Makes 1 loaf
- 125g butter, plus extra for greasing
- 200g caster sugar
- 2 large free-range eggs
- 200g plain flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 3 large ripe bananas (plus 1 extra banana split in two as garnish– optional)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 100g good quality dark chocolate chips
- 75g smooth peanut butter, slightly warmed
Warning! The following recipe is extremely addictive. Moist banana bread with its faintly exotic flavour is delicious by itself, cut in thick, generous slices. But add chocolate and peanut butter to the mix and you are guaranteed to finish the whole loaf.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan) and grease and line a 900g loaf tin with parchment paper.
Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl with a hand-held electric mixer until light and pale.
Add one egg and a little flour and mix through, then repeat with the other egg, remaining flour and bicarbonate of soda until everything is mixed through and smooth.
Mash the bananas with the back of a fork. Add them to the bowl with the vanilla extract and chocolate chips and mix through.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and then place dollops of the peanut butter across the top. Using a skewer, swirl the peanut butter through the batter and then bake in the oven for about an hour. (If using the extra banana to garnish, press gently into the batter, ensuring it doesn’t sink to deeply.)
Check on it after 25 minutes. If it looks like it is browning too much, cover the top with foil and return to the oven. It is cooked when a metal skewer inserted into the centre of the loaf comes out clean.
Allow to cool for a few minutes in the tin and then remove and place on a wire rack to cool completely.