Ever since I had my Carpal Tunnel Decompression operation on my left hand I have been trying to test how soon my wrist can take what kind of strain and one of the things I sorely missed was cooking what I wanted when I wanted and of course blogging too.

This week I finally managed to get back to cooking though I must admit that my wrist is still wobbly. So for such a wobbly wrist but determined to bake me ,Mary Berry’s easy recipe from her book Mary Berry’s Baking Bible, is a blessing. It’s a dead simple but fabulous recipe and even though I added a few tweaks it turned out so very perfect. My friend popped over tea and was so happy to see it baking in the oven, all her praise did good things to my ego as well, no doubt there 😉

So the thing is I have stopped buying regular butter and am big on low-fat options right now , trying hard to reduce the calorie count in my cooking while still getting the taste just right.

I am also pretty crazy on kitchen cleanliness and need to organise my thoughts before I press the start button in my head so I neatly gather all the ingredients and the vessels required for baking and my food photograph – which again is just about ok thanks to very ,very shaky hands! God , I need to use a tripod and how!

I do hope that all my friends who have been asking for the recipe ever since I posted the picture on FB will get baking and tell me how it turns out 🙂 After all, who doesn’t love a good ol’ recipe from Mary Berry?!

As you are aware you need very,very ripe soft bananas for this , perfect for a lazy bum like me who can totally forget that there are already bananas at home and go get some more . So this is a thrifty recipe too with a proper feel good factor post-baking, even for first-time bakers – just 7 ingredients and 2 minutes of whizzing with your whisk – so therapeutic I tell you! I love Mary Berry’s recipes , I simply follow them with eyes closed and the results are amazing each time!

So this is a thrifty recipe too with a proper feel good factor post-baking, even for first-time bakers – just 7 ingredients and 2 minutes of whizzing with your whisk – so therapeutic I tell you! Mary Berry makes baking and cooking look so simple and elegant, don’t you just love her?!

Ingredients:

1. 2 ripe bananas
2. 2 large eggs or 3 small will do – I used 3 small-sized ones
3. 100 gm unsalted ,softened butter – I used a salted olive spread – still superb results!
4. 225 gm self-raising flour
5. 175 gm golden castor sugar
6. 1 tsp baking powder
7. 2 tbsp milk – I use skimmed milk

Method:

• In a large mixing bowl sift the flour through a sieve, I always do but if you don’t have a sieve handy just skip this doesn’t matter in this recipe at least.
• Peel and break off pieces of the banana and drop them into the dough, add the sugar,crack the eggs into this and add the remaining ingredients.
• Stir properly folding in the dry ingredients with the wet to get a squidy mixture. I like to do this before using my hand-held blender – prevents the flour from flying all over the place .
• Meanwhile , preheat the oven to 180 °C / Fan 160 °C / Gas 4 and grease a 2 lb/900 gm loaf tin with the soft butter. I did not line the tin with a baking parchment but the loaf after it has cooled down totally came off so easy no mess whatsoever!
• Blend the mixture for 2 minutes (I counted it in my head while I used the hand blender , primarily because it was quite an agony to do this with my poor sore wrist)
• Spoon the mixture in the loaf tin and use a flat spatula to scrape off all the remaining mixture from the bowl into the tin – again a rather satisfying thing to do 🙂
• Level the surface of the mixture in the tin.

• Bake for one hour until it has risen and is a beautiful brown colour.
• A few tips for fan oven users , I kept the tray on the level just off the base of the oven and kept a wire rack 2 slots above it before preheating and throughout the baking process. I just feel that somehow the wire rack placement above the tin distributes the heat more evenly if you please? Humm, just a mad theory but works for me.  Another thing in the oven setting use the heat from top and bottom even heat setting if that makes sense.
• After one hour turn off the heat in the oven and wait for 5-10 minutes before opening the door as a huge blast of heat will slap you in the face. If you want to sure that it has baked through insert a fine skewer or a fine knife , if it comes off clean you are there !
• Remove the loaf tin onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely before  you cut off a piece . My friend and me had to literally stop ourselves from grabbing huge chunks from the hot bake , it looked so good ummmmm!

One beautiful thing about baking is that it’s an exact measurement game and if you get the measurements bang on the result is always really good.So invest in a decent weighing scale!

Starting to bake with easier simple recipes like the a Banana Loaf  is a great way to boost your confidence until you graduate to the more complex bakes. Thank you Mary Berry !

Bon Appe’tit folks 🙂