breakfast banana bread

I often make banana bread for breakfast.
I love the soft texture and biting down on all the little surprises inside...
Bananas never go to waste here!

The base recipe is from Joy of Cooking. It is simple and quick.
Then I throw in whatever I have in the cupboard: hazelnuts, walnuts, dried apricots, golden or thompson raisins, dried cherries...

The icing is what my mom did when I was young. Not too heavy, brings just the right amount of sweetness for breakfast. You'll find yourself scraping the plate to get all that you can...

Quick banana bread

Preheat oven to 350

Sift together and set aside:
1 3/4 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt.

in another bowl, mix:
1/3 cup soft butter
2/3 cup white sugar

Mix in:
1 beaten egg
2 ripe bananas, mashed

Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture. I like to add a dash of cinnamon, maybe cloves of nutmeg :) then add your nuts or dried fruit. Cook for about 1 hour. You can use a 9x9 cake pan, a round 9inch springform or a bread mould (but I find that the edges tend to get too dark for the centre to be fully cooked). Also, you can either butter + flour your mould or use parchment paper - that is what I do, less messy.


For the icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
juice of half an orange + zest
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Just mix all the ingredients together and pour over the bread - make sure there are no sugar clumps!