The BBC Good Food magazine has had a ‘healthy makeover’ section for a while now. I have always overlooked it and ignored because, let’s be frank, life without full fat cream cheese, butter and double cream really has no meaning. However, having ended up with some really ripe bananas (the black skin type ones, to be precise), I decided to give this recipe a go. After all, you can’t always turn down things in life.
I was lucky enough to find some authentic Greek yogurt in my local supermarket. The brand is FAGE and it’s the hardest and creamiest I have seen so far. It also tastes really good and it’s marketed (with a caption in Italian, weirdly enough) to be the real thing. Good enough for me. I also took a turn for the worse (or the fat, if you prefer) by substituting the walnuts in the original recipe with some chocolate chips. The mixture here is dense enough to hold them in place, so they won’t sink to the bottom but spread evenly throughout the cake. The pictures below I’m afraid don’t do the cake enough justice, but it really is delicious and the chocolate chips add just that extra flavour.
Ingredients
- 2 very ripe bananas, preferably with black skins
- 1/2 lemon, zest only
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 175g plain flour
- 50g plain wholemeal flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 25g ground almonds
- 25g butter, diced
- 85g light brown sugar
- 100g dark chocolate chips
- 2 medium eggs
- 100g full-fat natural yogurt
- 3 tbsp rapeseed (or flavourless vegetable) olive oil
Method
- Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a loaf tin (about 1kg) with baking parchment.
- Peel the bananas, break them in pieces and mash them with a fork in a small bowl. Stir in the lemon zest and the vanilla.
- In another bowl, mix both the flours with the raising agents and ground almonds. Add the sugar, then tumble in the butter and rub it in with the tip of your fingers.
- In a jug, mix the yogurt with the eggs and the rapeseed oil, then add it to the rest of the mixture. Don’t worry if it looks too dry as the mixture is a bit on the stiff side, but keep on mixing (but don’t overmix!). Last addition, fold in the chocolate chips.
- Pour the mixture in the loaf tin and level it out. Bake for 45 minutes, but check with a skewer whether the cake is done.
- Remove from the oven and leave in the tin to cool for 15 minutes, then remove and allow to cool completely.
Baking with Attitude 