Ginger Maple Banana Bread with Chia

I have a problem.

(Aside from, obviously, having massive commitment trouble when it comes to this blog.)

I am pretty much incapable of naming a recipe without listing all the ingredients in the title. See above.

I guess a girl could have bigger problems...

So anyway, I'm blogging because I'm feeling extremely pleased with myself! Baking and I are not really friends. I rarely do it, and when I do, I fail more often than not. Also it's messy. For some reason, I resent the mess I make baking more than I do any other kind of cooking. I think part of my problem (not with the messiness, with the baking failures), is that when I'm cooking on a stovetop, I can interact with the ingredients more, do lots of sampling, adding, and balancing ingredients. I like the experimentation. The experimentation has rarely translated well when baking.

Despite this, I decided to attempt to make banana bread today, for no reason other than having a wee hankering. Unfortunately, I'm on a bit of a health kick just now...attempting to lose all my broke-knee-stopped-exercise/work-in-an-office-sitting-on-my-ass-all-day weight that I have acquired since moving to Our Nation's Capital. (Ideally before I go home at Christmas, so that no one ever has to know it happened...) So. I tried to make banana bread healthy. And I don't think I did such a bad job!

I shall give Sons of Rico some of the credit, as I was listening to their album 'Reactions' while I threw bits and pieces into the bowl. Have you listened to them? If not, you definitely should. It's not new (I believe there is a new one in the pipeline though), but it's GOOD. You can find out where to grab a copy here.

Right. Recipe. Let's do this.

Ginger Maple Banana Bread with Chia

Ingredients:

Olive oil spray (to grease tin)
1 and 3/4 cups self raising flour
1/4 cup semolina flour
1/8 cup chia seeds (I actually didn't measure this, but it'd have to be close to that)
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon (I used less -I thought it would go well with the other flavours, but I don't actually like it that much)
2/3 cup maple syrup (the real stuff!)
1/2 cup skim milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup olive oil
2 bananas

Method:

I cheated a bit here, and used my Bellini Kitchen Master, affectionately referred to as my Pretendomix. It's Target's rip off of the Thermomix. I adore it. It's nowhere near as impressive as an actual Thermomix, but I just couldn't justify the money and for less than half the price, the Pretendomix is pretty damn remarkable.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC.

If you have a Thermomix or a Pretendomix, throw the milk, eggs, olive oil, and bananas in the bowl, and mix 10 seconds (more if it isn't mixed through) on speed 3.

Add flours, ginger, cinnamon, maple syrup and chia seeds to the bowl and mix for 30 seconds on speed 3 (if you know more about baking than I do, you may want to adjust, I just guessed) or until completely combined. Pour into a greased medium loaf tin.

Bake in preheated oven for 50 minutes, or until a pointy implement inserted into the centre comes out clean. Grab it from the oven and let it sit for about 5 minutes, before turning onto a wire rack to cool.

No Pretendomix? That's okay! This is a bit guessworky, but should work!

Sift both flours with ginger and cinnamon into a large bowl. Add chia seeds and stir to combine, then make a well in the centre.

In a separate bowl, combine milk, mashed banana, whisked eggs, olive oil and maple syrup. Stir until everything is properly combined.

Create a well in the large bowl with the flour etc, and pour the banana mixture into it. Stir until just combined, then spoon into a greased medium loaf tin and follow the baking instructions above.

Ta-dah!