The Best Cakes are Spread with Butter: Chestnut Banana Bread

The Best Cakes are spread with Butter (Brown Sugar & Chestnut Banana Bread) 

The best cakes are spread with butter. My tiny Welsh part loves Bara Brith mostly because it sounds like some sort of magical, fern-filled glen from a period drama where you’d have a breathy encounter with a man in breaches, and partly because it is that sort of plain, simple, rustic cake which calls for a proper slathering of butter. I also like the word slather, come to think of it. 

Bara Brith is the perfect example of everyday baking, so simple and humble that it includes no fat, and the moistness is provided by the raisins/sultanas/currants which have been soaked in tea. The fat is then added after, in the form of a heavy smear (smear is a questionable word) of butter on each slab before eating. But this is not a post about Bara Brith, although one day I’ll write one of those too. In my family, there are many cakes which are slathered/plastered/smeared with butter (lardy cake being one of them). I grew up with one granny in Wiltshire and one from Cornwall/Wales, so my appreciation of lard, butter, clotted cream and most dairy products/fats was profound from the beginning. My Wiltshire granny used to buy ‘half a lardy’ from the local bakery for us as a treat, warm it in the Aga and then slather it with butter. Considering how fatty lardy cake is on its own this is anathema to some people. To these people I say; the only thing better than one fat is two. And – I repeat - the best cakes are spread with butter.

These cakes are often actually called breads, which should thus quieten any doubters out there as to their true purpose (what do you spread bread with? You see!). Zucchini bread, pumpkin bread, tea bread, malt loaf (ok loaf not bread but you see my point). These are all begging to be spread with butter. The sort of cakes you ice do not need to be spread with butter, they’re usually rich enough and the icing/butter mix is not natural (though my mum has been known to spread her slice of Christmas cake with a good amount of butter, and my grandma – the lardy cake one of course - was fond of frying her leftover Christmas pudding in hot butter before serving it with extra cold brandy butter on top). Anyway, I digress, I could write a book about by family’s butter eating habits (one day I’ll do that too) but let’s get back to Banana Bread.

Banana bread is perfect because it is a bread (thus butter!) and yet it is also a cake (thus tea, thus a treat). It is perfect because it lasts, it’s inherently moist, it smells divine, it feels almost healthy (those bananas are good for you, you know). It is perfect because it requires almost nothing special other than an old bunch of bananas, because it takes minutes to make, because it can freeze, because babies like it, because it takes seconds to make, because it makes the house smell like a gently baked and buttered health food shop, and because there is almost no one out there that does not unashamedly love it. It goes with everything, anywhere, anytime, anyplace. You can give it as a gift. You can bake it last minute. Banana bread is that rare thing in the heavily opiniated and shouty food world: it does not divide opinion. Everybody who has a heart loves banana bread. And if you want to make that heart gladder, just slather it with butter. Banana bread is begging to be warmed, toasted sometimes, or to be simply eaten as it is, sliced thickly from the board, and spread with a thick, matte layer of salted butter, thick enough that you see the tooth-marks after you bite.

Now, say it with me: the best cakes are spread with butter.

This Banana Bread is a recipe I have been dreaming up since I moved to Italy, only 7 years ago (crikey). One of the great things about switching an English pantry for an Italian one (and I’m being metaphorical here – my kingdom for a pantry!) is that I now have easy access to chestnut flour, which you can also buy in the UK but is less easy to find and costs a fair bit more. Here they make it (and it is used frequently in Tuscan cuisine specifically) so you can get it everywhere, and I love to use it in cakes and bakes. Chestnut flour has no gluten which means it may need a little help from other flours in some contexts (making pasta for example). In sweet scenarios, I have used it in a few gluten free recipes where it works brilliantly as a full substitute (dark chocolate and chestnut cookies, for example), but in my home baking I tend to mix it with normal flour so it simply adds flavour and enhances the texture (it makes bakes more moist). The flavour is smoky, woody and sweet, like toasting caramel whilst treading on leaves, and it works beautifully in this very autumnal brown sugar scented Banana bread, which is a little Italian chic and a little classic and generally excellent. Best spread with butter (salty!)

A few general points on banana bread (about which I have Strong Opinions)

-       Your bananas need to be really, perfectly ripe; not so black that they go powdery, but beautifully freckly all over and so fragrant that make your whole house smell of banana. Catch them at the write moment and keep them in the freezer until you have enough. Then just let them defrost, slip them out of their skins and whisk and you will have a perfect, highly banana-flavoured puree. By no means should they be even a little green or snappable. They should be utterly smushy.

-       Banana bread does not need lumps, in my humble opinion. Part of its joy is the soft, yielding, almost wet texture of it as you bite. I could go for chocolate chunks which are melty, maybe, but nuts are interruptive and off putting. I feel the same way about brownies. No nuts here please.

-       Equally alcohol. Why would you do that to something so innocent?

-       It’s best spread with butter. Cold. Once it starts to get a bit past it’s absolute best I also like it toasted or grilled and spread with more butter.   

Makes 1 large loaf cake

230g ripe banana (about 3 ), mushed

1 lemon, juice & zest

130ml olive oil

100g butter, melted

230g flour (100g chestnut, 130g plain or 00)

3 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

220g light brown sugar

3 eggs

Heat the oven to 180.

Grease and line a large loaf tin.

Sift the flours, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. In a separate bowl whisk the oil, melted butter, sugar, banana, lemon juice and zest and eggs together. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and whisk in the wet ingredients until you have a smooth batter.

Pour into the prepared loaf tin and bake for around 60-90 minutes hour, until dark golden and risen (it may need you to turn the oven down to 160/170 if things start getting too dark around the edges). Stick a spaghetti strand into the centre to check if it’s done.

Allow to cool before turning out.

Eat with butter!!