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Polenta banana walnut bread.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

My current baking muse project is the banana walnut bread, where I’m trying variations of this recipe:

100g butter
100g brown sugar
2 eggs
450g bananas (mashed)
1 tsp vanilla essence
225g flour
1 tsp baking power
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
150g walnuts (chopped)
4 tbsp plain yoghurt

In the most recent cake baked, I used half and half polenta and wheat flour for the flour ratio of the cake, substituted cinnamon with five-spice, skipped the plain yoghurt and increased the amount of ground walnuts. I used three of the day-old eggs acquired from the small farm when driving through Tjörn and Orust. I think this cake tastes better when baked with muscovado sugar, here baked with caster sugar.

That went into the Bertazzoni at 160C for about 45 minutes, till the top of the cake was golden brown and the tester came out clean.

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MLocke

“I’d recommend that you breed Brahmas or Dvärg Wyandottes. They’re friendly breeds and look like fluffy little footballs running in the field. You’ll love them!” Meet beautiful Golden Wyandottes Hazel, Hannah and Emily who belong to the Locke Family. Photo by Mike Locke.

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Free roaming hens eggs from a small farm in the west coast northern archipelago islands of Tjörn and Orust in Sweden. These eggs are notably smaller in size but richer in taste than commercially farmed hens eggs.

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I love the pastel shades of these eggs.

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Mixture of half polenta and half wheat flour.

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Enjoying the cake outdoors in the garden when along came the first, small, season’s strawberry.