Super Tasty Banana Bread

*Ad – Gifted item

Last week it was the local home educators Literature Fair. The children did their project on ‘Poetry’ and did a little about how we have a regular poetry tea time, as well as sharing some of their favourite poems complete with accompanying illustrations.

We had also touched upon some of the literary devices poets use, things such as alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm and rhyme. D was keen that we also took with us some cake, as our poetry tea time always includes cake. In recent weeks he has developed a bit of a talent for making a rather delicious banana cake. It’s a great little recipe so I thought I’d share it here as it’s a superb way to give kids a bit of independence in the kitchen.

Ingredients

• two tablespoons of milk
• two eggs
• one teaspoon of vanilla essence
• two bananas (the riper the better)
• 170g of caster sugar
• 100g of softened butter
• 225g of self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda

Method

1. Mash the bananas together – the riper they are the easier this is. Daniel finds it easier to slice the banana into a large stainless steel bowl and uses a fork to do this
2. Pop the bananas and all the other ingredients into a mixer. We used the Von Shef Stand Mixer to do this.
3. Once the bananas and other ingredients are all mixed together pop the mixture into a lined loaf tin
4. Pop into a pre-heated oven (at 180) for around an hour.

I’m not a fan of bananas at all, but this is a really tasty bread and I’ll indulge in a slice (if there’s any left after the kids have helped themselves!) It’s also really easy to make a vegan version – we just substituted the butter for a non-dairy spread, added an extra banana and a drop of lemon juice in place of the eggs and a drop of almond milk instead of milk.

Daniel enjoys making this bread and baking is a great way of reinforcing ideas of weights and measurements as well as giving children that independence to create. He was particularly excited to have a play with the Von Shef Stand Mixer. We had received this a day earlier and he was keen to be the first to try it out. It’s all really very easy to set up and fit the correct attachment to. Daniel happily poured the ingredients in, added the cover and set it off. The operation of it was clear enough that he could manage it without instruction from me. He did need a hand to remove the bowl from the base, but that does need a little bit more of a push to remove it.

There are eight power settings, but we found that power setting one was more than adequate to mix up our mixture with ease – and certainly much easier and quicker than using a bowl and spoon! The splashguard is a good addition – especially with flour and an over-eager six-year-old who wants to try out setting 8! It makes sure all the contents stay in the bowl – where they can get mixed up.

The mixer is super stylish and compact and sits well in our modest kitchen and is perfect for us when making cakes and the such – next up we are going to try out an easter cake which I’ll share if it works!

Their peers certainly enjoyed the banana cake at the fair, and very little was left for us to bring home – although Daniel made sure he had a piece saved for after his evening meal.