Although a shop-bought cake is convenient and usually very good, a home-baked cake is much better, perhaps because a little bit of the soul of the cook goes into it along with the other ingredients ! 🙂 If doesn’t come out absolutely perfect, it really doesn’t matter – this just adds to its charm.

Different cakes suit different occasions. When I get bored from eating bread in my breakfast then I think of baking different cakes, loafs etc. This “banana & chocolate loaf” goes very well with morning coffee.

Ingredients :

1. Butter (softened) – 115 gm. + extra for greasing
2. Ripe bananas – 2
3. Self – raising flour – 200 gm.
4. Cocoa powder – 25 gm.
5. Golden caster sugar – 85 gm.
6. Salt – 1/8 teaspoon
7. Baking powder – 1 teaspoon
8. Egg – 2
9. Vanilla extract (optional) – 1 teaspoon
10. Milk (optional) – 1 – 2 tbspoon
11. Plain/dark chocolate chips – 80 gm.
12. Walnut – 50 gm.

Procedure :

Preheat your oven at 180°C or 350°F.

Grease a 900 gm./25 cm. loaf tin with butter or vegetable oil.

Melt 115 gm. of  butter and let it cool.

Peel the bananas and place on a plate, mash with a fork, no matter if few chunks of banana are left there. Roughly chop the walnuts.

Shift the dry ingredients i.e. flour, coco powder, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and mix very well. In another medium size bowl beat the eggs, add cold melted butter, milk and vanilla extract into it, whisk the mixture well. Then mix the mash banana into this liquid mixture. Now pour this mixture over the dry ingredients, also add chopped walnuts and chocolate chips into it. Mix both liquid and dry ingredients with the help of a spatula. Do not over mix it, just moist the dry ingredients with the wet one.

Now spoon the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and smooth the top with the spatula.

Bake in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes or until well risen and the tip of a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean. After 40 minutes of baking if it seems that the top of the loaf is burning then cover the loaf tin with an aluminum sheet and again bake the loaf for rest of the time.

Let stand the loaf in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. After that start cutting into slices.

Serve the slices with or without butter.

Note :

1. Bananas must be ripe.
2. You can also use white caster sugar instead of brown one.
3. If you are using plain flour instead of self-raising flour then add quarter teaspoon of baking soda into the dry ingredient mixture.
4. You can use any kind of nuts instead of walnuts and also white chocolate chips.
5. There is no need of either electric stand mixer or electric hand mixer. Whisk the ingredients only by hand.
6. The loaf can be stored for few days by keeping in an airtight container, wrapped with a foil.