This week I had to do some last minute baking. You know the sort, where you pull something together in a limited time, based on what you have in your house. I love doing this, as I always seem to find new recipes, exciting combos and usually wind up making something I have never made before.

This week it came in the form of banana, chocolate chip and hazelnut loaf. I know banana and chocolate are a classic combo so I am not really doing anything too revolutionary, but I always use walnuts when baking banana bread or cake. So when I found I didn’t have any in stock, but had a whole load of roasted hazelnuts, the choice was obvious – why go to the supermarket when I could use up what I had.

So that is exactly what I did.

I also transformed my icing for this loaf by using goats butter. Recently I have been trying to cut down of the amount of dairy I am consuming, or looking for alternatives to cows milk. As a result I have a few goats milk products lying around the kitchen – one of which was this goats butter. I was a bit nervous using it to make icing as I didn’t know how it would effect the flavour of the icing, but it turns out it was delicious. Another great discovery. (Apologies that I don’t have photos of this iced – I was rushing out the house and didn’t get time to take photos – Sorry!)

So when you are next stuck for something to bake, or just want to use up a few store cupboard ingredients and brown bananas – why not try your own adaptation of this.

Banana, chocolate chip and hazelnut loaf

Ingredients

6oz butter
6oz caster sugar
3 eggs
3 ripe bananas mashed
8oz self raising flour
3oz chocolate chopped into chunks

Icing

2oz butter
4oz Icing sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
hazelnuts to sprinkle over the top

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C degrees
2. Cream the butter and sugar together
3. beat the eggs until they are light and fluffy and combine into the creamed butter mix
4. Add most of the flour – leaving a little aside to add later
5. Next mix in the mashed banana and add the rest of the flour
6. Stir in the chopped chocolate, or any other store cupboard finds
7. Pour into a loaf tin and bake in the oven for 35 mins or until fully cooked ( to check simply Insert a kebab skewer or another sharp object into the cake – if it come out clean it is cooked – if not leave it another 5 mins)
8. Remove from the oven and leave to cool
9. For the icing, mix the butter and icing sugar together until creamy
10. Add the vanilla extract and a dash of water if needs be to loosen the cake
11. If the icing is too runny, a bit more icing sugar, if it is too solid, add some more water
12. Remove your loaf from the pan, Ice your loaf and then sprinkle your chosen nut on top!