Want the tastiest banana bread ever? You don’t need to wait for Masterchef. Leading consumer advocate, Choice magazine, carried out a test in its kitchen lab.
It compared banana bread mixes from cookbook author Donna Hay, patissier Adrian Zumbo and a homemade banana bread made by its home economist Fiona Mair. It also used packet mixes from White Wings, Lighthouse and Coles supermarket.
In a blind tasting, 50 Choice staffers munched their way through seven samples of banana bread and the homemade banana bread took top prize winning 42 per cent of the votes.
Donna Hay’s bread came in a distant second at 24 per cent and the least popular was Adrian Zumbo’s offering which received only 4 per cent of the votes.
The price paid for the packet mixes ranged from $2 for Coles to $7.70 for Donna Hay. Once the cost of additional ingredients like eggs, butter and banana was added, Coles banana bread cost $4.86, Donna Hay’s at $14 and Choice homemade banana bread at $6.05.
As each recipe makes a different size loaf, Choice worked out the cost of each product per 100grams. The Coles packet mix was still the cheapest at 52c per 100g, 62c per 100g for the homemade banana bread, Zumbo’s bread at $1.01 per 100g and Donna Hay cost twice as much at $1.12 per 100g.
So here is Fiona Mair’s winning recipe!
Ingredients
* 125g butter, softened
* 175 brown sugar
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 eggs, lightly beaten
* 2 cups mashed bananas (about four small bananas)
* 225g self-raising flour, sifted
* 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
* ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Method
1) Preheat oven to 160C, grease and line a 2 litre loaf tin
2) Place the butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl. With an electric mixer, beat for 1-2 minutes or until pale and creamy.
3) Add the eggs and beat well to combine. Add banana, flour, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon. Sir to combine
4) Spoon into prepared tin and bake for 55-60 minutes.
5) Cool in the tin for 20 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Cut into slices to serve.
Enjoy!