I first bought Julia Busuttil Nishimura's book Ostro back in January, my goodness it's a good one. There is so much I want to bake from there but Julia'a banana loaf is a total keeper. You can find the original recipe here; I have played around with the original to add in figs (both the black genoa and white smyrna semi sun dried figs work perfectly) and make a gluten free option. Hope you love it.
Makes one 24cm loaf.
Ingredients
2 eggs
150g raw sugar
100ml extra-virgin olive oil
2½ tbsp full-cream milk
2 very ripe bananas (about 250g in total)
150g (1 cup) Gluten free plain flour ( I use Caputo Fiore Glut gluten free flour)
1½ tsp baking powder
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2½ tablespoons cocoa
100g dark chocolate (60-70% cocoa), roughly chopped or use the pellets
50g (½ cup) pecans, roughly chopped (optional)
6 semi sun dried figs cut into pieces or slices
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 24cm loaf tin with butter and line with baking paper.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until pale. Pour in the olive oil, milk and whisk. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas until smooth, then add them to the batter mix. Sift in the flour, cinnamon and baking powder.
3. Stir gently but not for too long otherwise the loaf will get rubbery. Add the cocoa (sifted), chocolate, pecans, fig pieces and mix through.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. I also topped with a few more slices of fig, for decoration really. Bake for approximately 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. You can serve with butter but actually we just ate the slices as is, divine.
This looks and sounds yummy 😋