Hey there, homemade bread or home baked products are pure bliss to our health when compared to store bought ones!, agree? I am saying this because if you can manage to put little time & effort, it is not rocket science! It is quick to do when compared to other desserts at the same time we have complete control on the ingredients that we use. One can play around multiple ingredients of choice and also add goodness of fruits & vegetables that we like in their purest form. If it is store bought bakes, pure/ unadulterated ingredients are rare to find. Flavors are generally identical or artificial!
Now, coming to this post, I love baking & it
feels therapeutic to bake something for family. I don’t bake fancy stuffs
normally, they are simplest at the same turns reasonably good sometimes make
wonders! I am saying this, as in few cases, my bakes turn satisfactory too. You
get hold on any recipe & it becomes perfect after a couple of trials
normally. So make small portion always
for the first time & increase the measure subsequently. Today I am sharing
my latest hit at home fig & banana bread or cake you can call. I had plenty
of home grown fresh figs (ficus auriculata), which we couldn’t finish by
eating. I made halwa, smoothie, milkshake.. It makes a great combination with banana
is what I learnt from my trials. Be it smoothie or halwa, fig with added
bananas give that wonderful taste. So I made this bread by combining both
fruits as I had good number of banana (Mysore variety) which we brought from my father’s farm
during our recent trip!
Please check out the recipe.
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Baking time: 35 minutes
Serves: 250 gms of bread
Ingredients:
Fresh figs puree – ¾ cup
Ripe Bananas puree – ¾ cup, + 1 banana to garnish (garnishing is
optional)
All-purpose flour/ maida – 1¼ Cups
Fine Rava/ Small Semolina– ¼ Cup
Sugar – ¾ Cup, Adjust to taste
Coconut oil/ ghee/ butter – 3-4 tbsp/ about ¼ cup
Nutmeg powder – ¼ tsp
Cinnamon powder – 2 generous pinches
Baking soda – ½ teaspoon
Salt -1/4 teaspoon or a pinch
Chopped Nuts (cashews/ almonds) – 2 tbsp
Fresh curds or buttermilk – 2-3 tbsp (if needed)
Method:
- Figs puree: Choose fresh and juicy figs (I used elephant ear figs), peel off outer skin (this is not required in few varieties). Blend roughly chopped figs to get smooth puree.
- Making banana puree: Peel off and mash bananas well with your fingers. Keep one banana peeled and sliced thin separately for garnishing.
- Mix both fruit pulps, add sugar and mix well to get a single mixture (puree) with the help of a flat spoon or with a blender. Few small banana chunks are fine to have.
- Add in maida flour, small semolina, salt, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon powder and fold well once.
- Add coconut oil/ ghee to the same and mix again.
- Mix until all the ingredients blend well to form smooth dough. If it looks too dry, then add curds/ buttermilk. Consistency should be thicker than regular cake batter, but should not be too dry! (It should be stickier & softer than roti dough).
- Add the chopped nuts and fold to spread evenly.
- Preheat the oven to 180 deg Celsius.
- Grease a loaf pan or rectangular cake pan. Pour the mixture to this pan. Spread sliced banana (kept for garnishing) on top of this batter and press gently (this is optional). Bake for 30-35 minutes or until inserted fork/ toothpick comes out clean. By then top of the bread becomes brown. It took 30 minutes in my oven.
- Once done, allow to cool down. Invert on a plain surface/ Plate/ wired rack. Slice and serve warm with tea/ milk.
Notes:
- You can increase figs puree by reducing banana puree. If using over ripe bananas, then the flavor of banana dominates over that of fig.
- Sugar measure can be reduced (1/2 cup or little lesser to this measure)if you don’t like very sweet bread. As banana ripens more, it releases more sweetness too. So keep that in mind too while baking.
- Garnishing with sliced fruit is optional, which makes the bread look prettier.
- Maida can be replaced by whole wheat flour for healthier bread. Texture changes to some extent.
- Do not open the oven before 20 minutes to check.
- If you are using a Pressure cooker to bake, bake without gasket & weight but with lid closed.
- Store left over bread refrigerated in an air tight container. Warm it before every serving.
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