Banana, chili and white chocolate loaf

This sounds like an unusual combination of flavours but trust me it works! Recently, I found my old file of recipes when I was looking for my beer bread recipe. This folder has clippings from magazines, recipes from the back of packets of things, recipes passed to me from my mum and from my friends and photocopies of recipes from books I've borrowed in the past. It's a little treasure trove of recipes which I've not used in years so I had great fun looking through them.

I decided to pick a recipe at random so that I could enter it into Random Recipes hosted by Dom from Belleau Kitchen who has chosen the theme of magazines and clippings this month. My random selection is a recipe from my mum for a banana and white chocolate loaf. I've not made this in years but I remember this loaf being really tasty. It's a simple, no fuss recipe - just bananas and white chocolate. No nuts, dried fruits, yoghurt or honey.

This month's We Should Cocoa challenge this month is chocolate and chili so I thought why not add some chili? We cooked a Thai green curry for dinner so I had some leftover chilies anyway and it was as if it was meant to be. I cooked the chilies in sugar and water, then strained them and added it to the banana loaf. We Should Cocoa is guest hosted by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen on behalf of Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog. She chose the theme red hot chili for this month and although these are green chilies (I used the red one for the curry!), I hope it's still acceptable. 

I'm also entering this to the No Waste Food Challenge guest hosted this month by Manjiri from Slice off Me on behalf of Elizabeth from Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary. I used up leftover bananas and chilies in this recipe.

The predominant flavour of this loaf is banana - it's quite a wet, dense loaf and the white chocolate chips add a burst of sweetness. The chili kicks in at the end and was not overly spicy. Everyone thought it was delicious and most were intrigued by the taste. I had 2 slices myself as it's just so delicious. I hope you give it a try as it's quick and easy to bake and uses readily available ingredients. Do let me know what you think if you try it.

 cook the chilies in sugared water

 adding the white chocolate chips and cooked, sweetened chilies

 ready to bake 

 fresh from the oven 

 I love that you can still see the flecks of green from the chilies

Recipe adapted from mum

4 bananas mashed

85g unsalted butter

60g caster sugar

1 egg

170g flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

100g white chocolate chips

3 green chilies cooked in 150mls water and 100g caster sugar then drained.

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Slice the chilies finely, removing the seed in the middle.
• Measure out 150mls water and 100g caster sugar into a small saucepan. 
• Add the chopped chillies and bring to the boil then leave to simmer for another 5 minutes.
• Strain the chillies and set aside. 
• Beat butter and sugar with a spoon. 
• Add in the egg. 
• Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon in a bowl.
• In a separate bowl, roughly mash the bananas.
• Add half of the sifted dry ingredients to the butter mixture and stir.
• Add half the mashed bananas and continue mixing.
• Finally add in the remaining dry ingredients followed by the mashed bananas.
• Stir in the chocolate chips and strained, cooked chilies.
• Pour into a loaf tin and bake for approximately 45 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.