Self Isolation: Cornmeal Banana Bread

In need of a new banana bread recipe for our next week of lockdown? Let me introduce cornmeal banana bread for a slightly more savoury style of banana bread. Perfect toasted for breakfast or a snack or served with soup for lunch.

This are a great recipe for those very ripe bananas where the skin has gone very black and you want to use up. But if you are one of the few households in the UK without overripe bananas, you can mash and freeze less ripe ones as defrosting them makes them softer and better for baking.

It also works really well with those super ripe plantain that sell cheaply in the market or corner shops.

Not only is this another new banana bread recipe to add to your list but the use of cornmeal is great for baking if you don’t have enough flour. Adding some chopped nuts will also make flour go further in these lockdown times.

If you are new to baking you can make banana bread without a loaf tin by using a oven safe saucepan instead. Use the smallest deepest one you have and check the handle is oven safe. Or give yourself a new banana bread recipe flex by simply making it as muffins.

Makes 12 muffins or 1 x 2lb loaf :

• 250g plain flour
• 100g coarse cornmeal or polenta
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• salt to taste
• 3 very ripe bananas, mashed (or 2 plantain)
• 180g plain unsweetened yoghurt
• 50ml milk
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 100g sugar
• chopped nuts if liked (about 100g, roughly chopped)

Brush a loaf tin with oil or line a muffin tin with paper cases. You’ll need the larger muffin sized paper cases specifically.

Measure the flour and cornmeal into a large bowl with the bicarb and baking powder. Add a bit of salt as it helps enhance the sweet-savoury mix of this bread.

Peel and mash the very ripe bananas into a soft pulp with a fork in another bowl. Add the yoghurt, milk, oil and sugar to the bananas. Crack the eggs in it and beat it all together to a soft slippery mixture. Add the vanilla.

Now add the wet ingredients to the flour and cornmeal and beat together until all the flour is just combined and you have a puffy wet batter. Add the nuts and stir through lightly if you are using because you don’t have enough flour.

Pour the batter into your loaf tin or use a tablespoon or ice cream scoop to portion out equal amounts of batter into each muffin case.

Bake the loaf for between 45-60 minutes or the muffins for about 16-18 minutes at 180°C or until a skewer comes out of the centre cleanly. Allow to cool in the tin on a wire rack for about 30 minutes to help you lift the bread out of the loaf tin or peel the paper off the muffins more easily.

The banana bread is very moist and slightly sweet-savoury like some styles of American cornbread. It freezes well or will keep for up to 3 days. It’s particularly good with some Heinz Cream of Tomato soup which is another lock down essential frankly.

So not only a new recipe for banana bread, a whole new taste sensation to see you through self isolation. What more could you want?

If you do actually want more than a new recipe for banana bread, I will also be posting on the most interesting things you can do with a banana right now in a separate piece. You can thank me then.