The Colour of Sunshine.

A couple of days ago, i had a dear friend, who has a particularly soft spot for banana bread and all things green tea or Korean, come visit me from Sydney. Seeing how i'm not particularly adept at tackling the Korean cuisine and she just made a batch of the green tea shortbread herself, baking a loaf of banana bread was the only thing on that list i could manage. And lucky for me, i had a Nigella recipe bookmarked, waiting for its hour of fame in the kitchen.

As most of Nigella's recipes go, this was one of those 'low effort, very high reward' ones. It is surprisingly effortless, given that a electric mixer was not called for.


This loaf of banana bread was just perfect; a crust forms as it bakes in the oven which perfectly complements the light as air, moist and fluffy texture of the bread. That aside, i think what really set this particular loaf apart from the ones i've tried is the addition of the rum-plumped raisins. I left out the walnuts simply because i'm not a huge fan of them, especially not in banana bread so the raisins lent a really nice texture to this, resulting in a sweet burst of subtle rum flavour with every forkful.

So at this point, i suppose it's time i come clean with what actually happened with that loaf. The house was just filled with this wonderful aroma as this was doing its thing in the oven. And GT caught a whiff of it. In all my excitement about baking this loaf for my friend, i overlooked the fact that GT loves banana bread/cakes. In fact, the only thing he ever asks me to bake is this really sinful banana cake with white chocolate frosting. Other than that, he's not too crazy about cakes and its likes. You can so see where this is going right? After giving in his plead to have just one slice (which quickly turned into two), i had a slice myself. And well, let's just say there was enough to give my friend a little taste of it and maybe last us till the next day :)

Banana Bread [adapted from Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess]


Ingredients
100g sultanas
75ml rum
175g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
125g unsalted butter, melted
75g sugar
2 large eggs
300g bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat oven to 170C. Butter a 23 by 13 by 7 cm loaf tin, then line with baking paper and set aside.
2. Place rum and sultanas in a small saucepan and bring to boil. Remove from heat, cover and leave till sultanas have absorbed most of the rum. Drain and set aside.
   
3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, powder and salt. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, combine butter and sugar. Add eggs in one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add in bananas, vanilla and sultanas, mixing well.
   
5. Fold in flour mixture till just combined and pour into prepared tin.
6. Bake for about 60-75 minutes, till a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave in tin to cool completely. Makes 8-10 slices