Granny’s Cook book.

1 tsp of vanilla

3-4 bananas, mashed

1 cup of butter, softened

2 eggs

1 cups of sugar

4 cups of flour

1/2 tsp of salt

1/2 cup of warm water

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup of Nutella

1 cup of chocolate chips in any flavour, I chose white

This recipe is a nice, easy one, it gives even results and uses up speckled bananas that are left languishing in the fruit bowl half way through the week if you shop at the weekend. Too ripe to eat and not ripe enough to throw away, which is wasteful anyway.

The boys love to come home from school to a hunk of this with a hot drink on a cold winter’s day. You could even serve this warm with custard, ice cream or cream, it’s very filling and quite sweet, the only change I made when baking mine, was I put a little less sugar into the mix, less by 1/2 a cup. Method

Cream together the butter and the sugar, then add the eggs, mix to combine.

Add the flour and mix again. Dissolve the baking powder into the warm water and put that in, add the bananas and the salt and vanilla. Lastly add the chocolate chips and mix again.

Liberally grease your baking tins, this recipe makes two regular loaves if split in half, I confess I put mine into a larger tin, so it made a shallower cake, but that’s what I wanted because it has to fit into sandwich bags for a lunch kit tomorrow as well.

If I make a double amount of cake, I very often portion it out and pop it into bags, I can freeze them, then when I’m running around doing the lunches for the day, I grab a couple of pieces, it thaws in plenty of time and helps keep everything else cool in there whilst it does.

Pour your cake dough into the pan and get your Nutella ready, you can microwave it for approx. 10-15 seconds, just enough to make it runny, then pour this over the top of the cake. I then used a spoon to make a pattern on the top by pressing the spoon into the cake dough and trailing it down across the surface of the cake.

Place into your oven which you should have preheated to 350 degrees F. I keep an eye on it and it usually takes about 50 mins to an hour to cook through. When I think it’s done, I take it out and test it with a knife or a cocktail stick or skewer. If it comes out clean, it’s done.

Once your cake is cooked you can cut it up and let your family and friends devour it.

Another good way of serving it is to cut the cake in half horizontally and fill it with more Nutella. Then serve it with whipped, sweetened cream. It’s fancier that way, but not good in a lunchbox as the chocolate spread goes everywhere.

Enjoy!