Caroline: Banana bread is one of my favorite sweets and it reminds me so much of my childhood. We used to beg my mom to make it for us! This recipe isn’t quite as good as hers, but I think I’m almost there. After tweaking through a couple of batches here’s what I’ve come up with:

Ingredients

4 really ripe bananas

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups plain flour

50g almond meal

1/2 cup sugar (caster or raw, I used caster)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking powder

tsp cinnamon

(chopped walnuts if you want)

Method

Beat the eggs and 3 of the bananas together in a large bowl

sift in all dry ingredients and beat together

mix in nuts if you like

I save one whole banana to chop into the batch and mix around gently so there are some big chunks of banana in the bread

bake in a loaf pan on 180C (360F) for 1 hour
(we have a pretty crappy oven so mine took the whole hour, but it’s important not to overcook, it’s meant to be dense and gooey. If you think it’s finished early take it out and pierce the center with a skewer, if it comes out clean all done!)

Place on cooling rack

EAT!

Kris: The banana bread tastes awesome fresh out of the oven with nothing more than butter on it. I thought I would jazz it up a bit to match with the Moa Breakfast Beer. A Dunkelweizen is another ideal match to banana bread.

Caroline: Warm banana bread with salted butter is delicious! But I wasn’t sure about mixing in a bunch of other savory components…

Kris: I put some avocado on the banana bread, some wilted spinach, warm ham, roasted cherry tomatoes from the garden and a soft poached egg. I thought the sweet and savoury combination would go really well together.

Caroline: Boy was I wrong to doubt Kris’ idea! I love savory and sweet breakfasts so much by themselves I couldn’t imagine mixing them, but, OH MAGIC. The runny poached eggs, fresh cracked pepper, salty ham, sweet cherry tomatoes, and the dense-ness of the banana bread were so great together! The texture of the banana bread was so much nicer then plain toast and the sweetness of the bananas was mild enough to compliment the ham and not over power it. YUM
I’m converted.

Kris: Moa is a craft brewery based in Marlborough, New Zealand. I haven’t done a breakfast matched with a beer so I thought it was about time. The Moa Breakfast Beer is a 5.5% cherry wheat beer. The high carbonation and light body cut through the richness of the breakfast dish. The cherry flavour complimented the sweetness of the banana bread.

Caroline: Breakfast of champions!!