Sunday baking: Banana bread with spelt, oats and maple syrup

It’s a familiar problem – you’ve bought too many bananas, thinking it’s high time to up your potassium intake or whatever, and within the blink of an eye they’ve morphed from a verdant shade of not-quite-ripe to squidgy, squealchy, slimy, shrivelled shadows of their former selves.

Panic! What to do? What to DO?! For starters, don’t throw away the brown bananas. Either peel and freeze for morning smoothies, make banana ice cream or go bananas (haha) baking them, as I invariably do. Well I don’t go bananas, but you get my drift. Muffins, cakes, banoffee pie, you name it, this fruit is definitely not for wasting.

Banana bread is the simplest of loaves to make, just follow these directions and for knapp 1 hour, rest your aching legs, make a cuppa tea and relax while all those ingredients work their magic.

p.s. slightly decadent use of maple syrup in this recipe, but I had a bottle of not-s0 great maple syrup that needed using up. You can of course ubstitute with light brown sugar…

Banana bread with spelt, oats and maple syrup

Preheat oven to 170 C.

In one large bowl mix:

• 3 medium bananas
• 100ml whole milk (+  1 tsp white wine or cider vinegar to acidulate it)
• 75g melted butter
• 75ml maple syrup
• 1 large egg

In a second medium bowl sift and stir:

• 225g refined spelt flour
• 50g wholemeal flour
• 4 tbsp oats
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt

Add all the dry ingredients to the large bowl with the liquid ingredients and fold in with a large metal spoon until the mixture is even.

Pour in a long loaf tin, sprinkle with a tablespoonful or more of oats and bake on the upper middle shelf of the oven for 50 minutes to 1 hour. It should have doubled in size, look golden brown and if in doubt, skewer the banana bread. Withdraw skewer, if there’s any wet mixture on it, bake the bread for a few minutes longer. Simples.

Banana bread keeps really well, just wrap it in clingfilm or aluminium foil and store what you don’t eat for a few days. Perfect breakfast, brunch, afternoon tea, heck midnight snackage fare.