Going Bananas for Brownies...

Every once in a while there comes a perfect meeting of ideas that leads you to finding something fantastic. I recently had one of those moments...

A few months ago Dear Hubby asked me to make him a carrot cake. Now to my shame I had to confess that I had never actually made a carrot cake before. I know, crazy that such a popular cake, and one that I'm also rather partial to myself, had never found its way into my oven and so I agreed to make one for him. He did have one stipulation...no sultanas.

Every carrot cake I had eaten until then had sultanas in it but it was by no means a deal breaker so I went hunting for recipes. It seems that the general consensus is that carrot cake should have sultanas (or raisins) in it. I did manage to find one recipe with no sultanas in Mary Berry's Baking Bible but unlike all the other carrot cake recipes I had found it did contain bananas. Ripe bananas in fact. Now I just happened to have some bananas in the fruit bowl. Very ripe bananas.

lovely ripe banana...perfect for baking

I am something of a sucker for a bargain when I am shopping, and I can't resist an offer in the supermarket and so for a while we found ourselves with more bananas than we could eat before they started going a little mushy. Luckily as it turns out, over-ripe slightly mushy bananas are perfect for carrot cake. I actually ended up making quite a few carrot cakes over the next few weeks. Yes, this recipe is that good. So good that I actually bought more bananas and let them get overripe on purpose so that I could make more carrot cake. Over the next few cakes I tinkered with the exact quantities of banana a little and added some spices to give it a bit of a zing and I prefer my frosting a little less runny than Mary Berry's but the original recipe was so good I have to give credit where its due and say that for now I'm not posting the recipe but you can find the original in Mary Berry's baking bible. When I've refined my tinkering (and taken some blog worthy photos) I will post my version, but for now I've made so many that carrot cake is temporarily off the menu...  but thats how I found myself here, with another lot of overripe bananas and no carrot cake on the menu. I had to find something else to use up the bananas.

One thing I had noticed during the great carrot cake frenzy was how the amount of banana affects the density of the cake. As Mary's original recipe asked for two ripe bananas but gave no indication of how ripe or how big the bananas should be I played around a little with the amounts of banana depending of how much I had available and I started looking into other recipes that used bananas. Of course banana bread was an option, and I found numerous recipes for banana cake, but I also found bananas listed in an article about substitutions for vegan baking. It seemed that banana is a great substitution for egg, for the most part bananas will do all the same jobs that egg does in a cake if not quite as successfully. Even though you won't get the same texture as a cake made with egg you'll still get a good cake but if you add a bit too much banana you do run the risk of the texture being a little dense. The carrot cake had both egg and banana in the mix and had a slightly dense texture which I rather liked, still retaining some of the lightness you get from an egg based cake but with the moisture that bananas bring. I realised that the perfect recipe to play around with swapping out some eggs for banana was brownies. Brownies are another thing that also passed me by in my youth, of course I enjoyed eating them but much to Dear Hubby's surprise I had never made them myself. Again, Mary Berry came to the rescue. I had previously tried the Chocolate Chip Brownies from Mary Berry's Baking Bible and they were an absolute hit, already quite dense and moist with an intense chocolate flavour which I thought would stand up well to the addition of banana. Let's face it, if you add a large quantity of very ripe banana to something the chances are that the end product will taste of banana.

Well what can I say...the Chocolate Banana Brownies were a total success. I've made a few batches and shared them around freinds, neighbours and work colleagues and everyone loved them. I've made some plain and some with additional flavourings such as peanut butter or speculoos spread swirled in and they were all amazing. And the best bit, they are super moist and gooey. The banana seems to stop them from drying out. I had one batch on the kitchen counter for almost a week, just wrapped in foil, not even in an airtight container, and they were still really moist and delicious. They also freeze really well so they're great to have on standby for unexpected visitors (or midnight snacks) just defrost them in the microwave on the lowest setting for 8-10 minutes, depending on how warm you want them, and they will still be wonderfully moist.

Chocolate Banana Brownies

Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Brownies

This is enough for two 7" square tins
(I use the shallow ones with a slightly sloping side, they're 7" across at the bottom and 8" at the top)

makes 32 brownies, 16 each tin.

You will need:

3 large eggs

250g ripe bananas, mashed

412g unsalted butter, softened

562g caster sugar

150g self raising flour

112g cocoa powder

Optional:

160g dark chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/fan160C. Line the baking tins with foil backed baking parchment, foil side down. There is no need to grease the tins if you use this lining.

2. Mash your bananas well in a small mixing bowl until no large pieces remain. If you have frozen your bananas you may find that some liquid has separated from the flesh. If this happens, use a hand mixer the beat the banana until the liquid is blended with the flesh.

3. Add the eggs to the banana and beat well, this helps ensure an even distribution of the banana in the final mixture.

4. Put the butter, sugar, flour and cocoa into a large mixing bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, and pour the banana egg mixture over the top. This helps prevent a cloud of cocoa and flour escaping when you start to mix. Beat the mixture, slowly at first until the dry ingredients start to incorporate, and then keep mixing until mixture is evenly blended. If you are adding chocolate chips, add them to the bowl now and mix for a few seconds more until they are evenly distributed.

Divide the mixture equally between the two tins, ensuring that it reaches all the corners, and then level the top to ensure even baking.

5. Bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until the brownies start to develop a crust on top. A skewer should come out clean. If the brownies start to get a little too crispy on top before they are baked through, cover loosely with foil for the final 10 minutes of baking.

...delicious spoonfuls of peanut butter peeking out of the brownie batter...

Leave to cool in the tin then lift out in the parchment lining and divide each batch into 16 pieces. The brownies can be stored in the parchment with a little extra foil wrapped around. There is no need to keep in an air tight tin as they will stay wonderfully moist for at least a week.

If you wish to freeze some brownies, divide into small portions and wrap in foil. To defrost, leave out at room temperature overnight or remove from the foil and defrost in a microwave on the lowest setting for 8-10 minutes.

You can omit the chocolate chips entirely if you wish or replace them with an alternative of your choosing. Why not try swirling salted caramel sauce or chestnut jam through the mixture once it is in the tins. Or maybe spoon small amounts of peanut butter or speculoos spread into the top of the brownie mixture. You could even pipe dots of peanut butter onto a tray and freeze it, then mix into the brownie batter instead of the chocolate chips.