Oh Hayley What Have You Started?

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A fair while back the lovely Hayley of Away With The Fairy Cakes wrote about “Banana Bread’s Sexy Older Sister” and doesn’t a title like that just make you want to bake them? A few dilemmas put me off baking them until yesterday though; firstly Hayley didn’t like them much and found them bitter but that could have been simply because she doesn’t like coffee and these babies contain a good dose of it; and, secondly that I’m none too keen on banana bread myself, I have fond memories of eating vast amounts of nutty banana bread on holidays to The States and I did make lots at home too but (I think through cooking and eating too much) I lost the liking for it a few years back. 

Somehow I felt compelled to bake these, I just couldn’t refuse and oh my goodness I’m so glad I did – they’re stunning! Not bitter, not too strongly banana tasting, not too moist or dry but just perfect. The recipe can be found here, and believe you me, you have to bake them, don’t resist the urge

I didn’t have any chocolate chips so I just roughly chopped some dark chocolate into chunks and dropped them into the batter instead, you end up with bigger pieces of chocolate which is hardly a problem at all.

Also I don’t keep instant espresso powder in my pantry so I made a ristretto and added that to the mixture instead. Did I mention that I did this in my fanatabulous new Gaggia Titanium E Plus, fully automatic bean to cup machine? Oh how I love my new gadget, thank you, thank you, thank you to my dad for buying it. You should have seen me when it arrived, I was leaping around the kitchen like a big kid, desperately trying to read the manual and make coffee at the same time, and oh what a coffee it can make! 

What else did I change? Oh yes I made mini loaves instead of muffins, just for a change as I seem to have made a lot of muffins/cupcakes recently and I thought I’d test out the disposable loaf cases I bought recently.

As a finishing touch I dotted each one while still warm with a few chocolate coated coffee beans and a scant scatter of demerara sugar for crunch and that glistening appearance.

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Filed under Cakes & Cookies, Vegetarian