Banana Bread with Ice Cream

After an unusually cold winter we are finally thawing out. We had a really good week with warm temperatures. It seemed like the perfect evening to have banana bread with ice cream for dessert.

If you like to bake then you have most likely baked a banana bread. It is one of the easiest ways to use ripe or over ripe bananas. Today I baked a banana bread with a little twist. I adapted this recipe from the King Arthur flour website. This recipe uses honey and apricot jam. As luck would have it I had just enough apricot jam left over after baking the German Tree cake. I also used mostly whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour. The resultant bread was moist and flavorful. And the best part of it was I used up the overripe bananas.

You will need

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. salt

2 large ripe bananas

2 eggs

1/4 cup honey

3 tbsp. apricot jam

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (I used chappati flour)

3/4 cup all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 325 F if using a glass loaf dish. Preheat to 350 F if using metal.

In a mixing bowl beat the sugar with the butter and oil. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla and salt and beat again. Add mashed bananas and mix together. Add the eggs, honey and apricot jam and mix well together. Now stir in the flours a little at a time. You will get a sticky batter.

Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan. Bake for 45 minutes. My pan was too small for all the batter so I put some of it into a 6 muffin pan. I set the temperature at 325 F as I used a glass pan. The muffins were done after 45 minutes.

Cover the loaf pan with aluminium foil and bake for another 20 minutes. Let it rest on the counter top for 10 minutes before transferring it to a cooling rack. Let it cool completely before storing.

To serve, cut up a slice and place it on a plate. Put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the top.

Enjoy!