Chocolate Hazelnut Banana Loaf

Call me a cliche - isolation baking banana bread

If you’re like me, you might have stocked up on “healthy” foods like bananas, only to look over them for more comforting treats.

I really hate waste, which means I can’t throw out over-ripe fruit. I have to repurpose it into something more delicious – enter, banana bread!

Some very smart person mentioned toasting banana bread and covering it with Nutella and I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of it before. In fact it was such a good idea I just had to make some and try it. And thinking of how well banana bread and Nutella would go together, I wanted to infuse some Nutella flavours into the loaf itself.

Ingredients

• 110g butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 100g soft brown sugar
• 3 medium eggs
• 3 ripe bananas, mashed
• 280g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 85ml buttermilk (or normal milk mixed with 1½ tsp lemon juice)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 100g chopped hazelnuts (or as much as you have, I only had about 40g)
• 100g chocolate chips
• A drizzle of honey

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

With a hand held whisk, beat together the butter and sugars until smooth. Throw in the eggs, bananas, buttermilk and vanilla and beat further. 

Add the dry ingredients and beat again until well mixed. Then add the chocolate chips and hazelnuts and fold in carefully.

Put in a decent sized loaf tin (mine looked to be about 20cm by 10cm ish) which you've greased and lined with greaseproof paper.

Bake for 65 minutes (you might need to cover in tinfoil around 45 minutes in, to stop the top becoming too brown).

Remove once golden and cooked through, and drizzle a few tsp of honey over the still-hot loaf.

Allow to cool before slicing and enjoying.