How many banana breads have you made over the last 12 months of the Covid-19 pandemic?
There were pictures of banana bread popping up on social media all day every day at the beginning of the pandemic. There are nearly 2 million hashtags on Instagram for #bananabread. Google ‘banana bread recipe’ and you get 239,000,000 results!!!
My name is Gosia. I’m the co-founder of Wellbeing in Your Home. I make banana bread at least once a week, which means that I must have made between 50 to 100 loaves in the past year alone. I am totally addicted and obsessed! Zach usually eats 75% of it. There is hardly any left over the next day! I do make other cakes, but banana bread is the one I enjoy making the most.
Pandemic baking
I have a very emotional relationship with baking and cooking. They had got me through the last year. They are my therapy. I find them very meditative and mindful. They calm me down. I feel in the present moment when I am busy cooking, nothing else matters! Just like yoga, meditation or painting.
When I first moved to London, I was feeling very lonely and missed my family and friends back in Poland a lot. I cooked Polish dishes every Saturday for comfort (and drank Polish beer while doing so). I made bigos (hunter’s stew), pierogi (dumplings) and kotlety (schnitzels) in industrial quantities. Baking also makes me think of my mum’s mum a lot. She was a the baker of the family! So, when I make a cake, I literally pour my heart and soul into the baking tin together with the batter!
This recipe produces an exceptionally light result, and you can use a mixture of wholemeal and white flour, too. You can also substitute the raisins with dark chocolate chips or chopped dates. So delicious toasted with some butter the next day.
Ingredients:
- 2 large eggs
- 140g caster sugar
- 150g of vegetable oil
- 140g self-raising flour
- 1tsp baking powder
- 3 very ripe bananas, mashed
- 80g raisins/sultanas
How to make it:
- Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160C fan
- Using electric handheld mixer or a kitchen robot beat the sugar with the eggs until pale for a couple of minutes. If you do not have an electric mixer, a whisk will also do!
- Add the oil and beat for 10 seconds until everything is well mixed.
- Slowly add the flour and the baking powder.
- Add the mashed bananas.
- Stir in the raisins.
- Transfer into a greased tin and put in a pre-heated oven for 40-45 minutes.
Enjoy!
Do you fancy learning how to make a wonderfully easy banana bread and do some yoga at the same time, sign up for our upcoming ‘Stretch and Bake’ Workshop here.
Here are some pictures of my creations. Now I wish I took a picture for every loaf I made!
