Happy Merdeka - Long Weekend Baking

A quickie post. Merdeka Day for me means peace and quiet in more ways than one. Its also a good time to catch up on untried recipes and cleaning out the closet. This long weekend for me involved a lot of cooking. We had some friends over on Saturday and I managed to make a simple Chinese meal of lotus root soup, cold beancurd with sweet and sour pickled vegetable, steam fish with ginger spring onion and soy dressing and a mildly spiced chicken curry. Mum would be proud! The lotus root soup tasted just as good as Mum's. Unfortunately the cold beancurd was a bit of an acquired taste I think! I love it! The following evening Ducky came over for a belated birthday/buka puasa dinner. We had beef fried rice and leftover soup followed by Hunky's tarty lemon tart for dessert.

There is nothing more lovely than the aroma of freshly baked goodies. So I made a banana loaf although I should have let the bananas ripen more. Also I think it needs a little more butter but overall its a pretty healthy banana loaf. Heres the recipe if you would like to try it.

150g brown sugar (you can add more, original recipe calls for 250g)

140g unsalted butter, softened

2 eggs

250g ripe bananas, mashed (I used pisang raja)

280g plain flour, sifted

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp soda bicarbonate

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1. Preheat oven to 170C. Grease a 23 x 13cm loaf tin
2. Beat butter and sugar in mixer until well incorporated, add the eggs.
3. Then add mashed bananas.
4. Add flour, baking powder, soda bicarbonate, cinnamon and ginger into the mixture.
5. Pour into prepared tin and bake for about 45 mins - 1 hour depending if you have a fan assisted oven. Mine is the latter and took only 45 mins.
6. Leave to cool in tin slightly before turning out onto rack to cool completely.