Black Banana Cake

It's not Monday, but it feels like a 'black' day anyway. The sky is dull with swooshes of deep grey interspersed with teeny tiny touches of barely blue. I'm feeling dull and things don't seem very perky at the moment. 

The bananas in the fruit basket didn't look very encouraging either. A little too soft and speckled for eating. So, I rummaged through my stack of recipe books for the usual never-fail Banana Cake. The abundance of bananas however, led me to look for another, and I came across a rather interesting looking Black Banana Cake from dear old Nigel. 

It promised to be a sweet, hazelnut-ty, banana-ey, chocolate chip speckled delight - a sort-of Nutella-crossed banana cake. Well, it certainly delivered... YUM!

BLACK BANANA CAKE

Adapted from Nigel Slater

175g salted Butter, softened

175g Light Brown Sugar

75g Ground Hazelnuts

2 Eggs

175g Self-Raising Flour

2 ripe Bananas

1/4 teaspoon Vanilla Essence

175g Bittersweet Chocolate Chips

Preheat the oven at 140 Celsius. Butter and line the base and sides of a loaf tin with baking paper.

Cream Butter and Sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy.

Add in the Eggs one by one beating well after each addition. Mix in the Vanilla Essence.

With a spatula, gently fold in the Self-Raising Flour and Ground Hazelnuts until just combined. 

Peel and mash the Bananas roughly. Fold this into the batter gently and finally add the Chocolate Chips.

Scrape batter into the prepared tin and bake for at 150 Celsius for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until a skewer poked through the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

Leave the cake in the tin for about 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.