Delicious recipes from around the world: Banana bread from Jamaica

Today I baked banana bread. Well, by the time you read this is will actually be last week I baked banana bread as I am about to schedule this post for next Wednesday. So by now I am sure the banana bread that is this moment still baking in the oven will have been wholly consumed and pretty well forgotten about. But anyway, you get the gist.

As I was mixing, I got to thinking about the recipe, which is from a Jamaican cookbook we brought back from our time there. It sits on the shelf alongside a book from Pakistan (Cuisine Along the Great Trunk Road), a Malaysian cookbook, Caribbean barbecue recipes, scraps of paper with curries from our helper in Islamabad scrawled on, cut out recipes from St Lucian newspapers….as well as our Jamie Olivers and our Delia Smiths.

I don’t cook many of the Jamaican recipes – to be honest, although my husband adores the food from Jamaica, I was never the biggest fan of curried goat or jerk chicken, bones and all (although I would pay good money to go back to Boston Bay for some jerk pork and roasted breadfruit). Sorry any Jamaicans reading this! Anyway, although we don’t do a lot of home Jamaican cooking, there is one recipe that gets baked over and over from the book – banana bread. Not only is the recipe very, very easy – it is, apparently, totally foolproof. For some reason, it always seems to come out well – which is saying something for me and my baking attempts! It is also – of course – delicious and, considering it contains bananas, reasonably healthy. Well apart from all the sugar and butter….

So without further ado, because I know you want it, here is the recipe:

(This apparently produces 6 portions: they are quite big portions!)

Quarter lb butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg, beaten

3 large, ripe bananas, crushed

2 cups of flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

Quarter tsp nutmeg

Pinch salt

Half cup milk

2 tsp vanilla

Quarter cup raisins

1, Cream butter and sugar

2. Add egg to butter and sugar

3. Add crushed bananas and mix well

4. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt

5. Add flour mixture to butter, sugar and egg mixture, along with the milk and the vanilla

6. Add raisins

7. Pour into greased and lined loaf tin and bake at 350 degrees F for one hour or until done.

8. Lick bowl.

So for today’s recipe it’s all about using up ingredients and I have used caster sugar instead of granulated, and strong white baking flour instead of normal plain flour. Also, I have no raisisns – and I am trying to avoid buying anything new at the moment so the bread shall remain raisinless.

And now for the results! Here it is, straight from the oven:

And the first slice, perfect with a cup of morning coffee (as I am about to do).

Delicious! Although it could do with some raisins…..

Do you have any favourite recipes collected on your travels? Tell me about them below – and if you’ve written about them on your blog please leave a link!