Harissa & Dark Chocolate Chunk Banana Bread
Harissa, probably not the first thing to think of as an ingredient for a banana cake or loaf, but hey, don’t knock it until. you’ve tried it!
It doesn’t seem too long ago since banana bread was all over the internet,.
During lockdown it seemed that if foodie content creators didn’t have a recipe for it on their website, they weren’t worth looking at.
Thank goodness i didn’t post this recipe then and saved it for now, saved it until i had the bananas that are ready to be used.
Really black and overripe are the perfect bananas to use for any banana bread recipe. Those bananas that lie in the fruit bowl forgotten and rejected are the ones to use.
So, why harissa in this recipe? The only way to answer this question is to make it for yourself and try it.
The short answer is that the harissa adds a little bit if umami and a small bit of heat on my tongue, a combination i like.
My ideal amount of harissa is 2 tablespoons, but if you experiment a little with the recipe, you can figure out exactly how much you prefer in your bread. You might like a bit more of a tongue tingle, so add 1 tablespoon more.
The chocolate?
i’ve used a chocolate bar and chopped it instead of using pre-packaged chocolate chips. I prefer the different sized pieces chopping gives me and all those chocolate crumbs it leaves behind , they all go to add something even more special to this cake.
The chocolate crumbs and chunks add a luxury to this cake, a luxury that shouldn’t be in a cake that uses something that would normally be thrown away, black and overripe bananas!
Make it vegan
This recipe is vegetarian, and It’s easy to make this vegan by substituting the chocolate for a dairy free kind.
Go on, give it a go and enjoy your sweet life!
The chopped chocolate gives it a bit of luxury
What You Need
300g Very Overripe Bananas – Approx. 3 medium sized – See Tip Box
250g Plain Flour – Plus extra for dusting
200g Bar Dark Chocolate – Roughly chopped into chunks – See Tip Box
170g Castor Sugar
100ml Milk – None dairy
80ml Vegetable Oil
2 Tbsp Harissa Paste
2 Tsp Baking Powder
2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
Margarine to grease the inside of the tin.
Harissa paste adds something special
How It’s Done
Grease an 8” x 4” tin
Set aside the chopped chocolate 100 g of the chopped chocolate 9including the chocolate crumbs)
Lightly dust with some flour
Cut out two strips of non-stick baking parchment and place one strip over each other in a criss-cross, making it easier to lift the cake out of the tin when cooled.
Peel and mash the bananas and place them into the bowl of an electric mixer.
The riper the better
Add the sugar, milk, oil, harissa and vanilla into the bowl and beat them until the mixture looks like lumpy soup.
Add the flour, baking powder and all but 100g of the chopped chocolate
Have the mixer on slow and combined until it just comes together – See Tip Box
Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin
It looks a bit like pink soup before the dry ingredients are added
Sprinkle the leftover chopped chocolate and crumbs all over the top of the cake
Place the filled cake tin into the hot oven and bake for approx. 60-70 minutes until the top is a deep colour and the centre is a little springy to the touch. – See Tip Box
Once baked, remove it from the oven and set it aside to cool completely
Once cooled, use the overhanging pieces of parchment to lift it from the tin
Serve at room temperature
Criss cross two strips of non-stick parchment
Tip Box
Banana – The bananas should be really over ripe, the blacker the better for this recipe.
Dark Chocolate – 1) Roughly the dark chocolate so there are lots of varied sizes of chocolate pieces, including the crumbs.
Let it cool in the tin before using the strips of parchment to help remove it
2) Set around 100g of the chopped chocolate aside including the chocolate crumbs left over from the chopping.
Mixing – Don’t over mix the cake mixture. Just until the cake mix comes together, otherwise the cake may be tough.
Soft, squidgy, moist, chocolatey with a little bit of a bite.
Baking – 1) Each oven is different so adjust the baking time accordingly
2) Because of the chocolate inside the cake, if a tooth pick is prodded into the cake to try to gage if it’s baked all the way through it probably won’t come out clean. So, use your judgement to know when the cake is cooked all the way through.
Delicious
