When we were little, we used to love to watch our grandmother bake. Cooking was everyday but, as we realised, baking was something special. One of our favourite things she used to bake – like a lot of grandmothers – was an exercise in thrift, a squidgy cake made from the almost black bananas in her fruit bowl. We used to sit on the counter (too little to see any of the action otherwise), squabble over the mixing (“It’s my turn to mix, she did it last time”) and delight in being able to lick the bowl after our grandmother had safely transferred the mixture into a tin and into the hot oven. And then when it came out, a thick slice for teatime with a tall glass of cold full fat milk.

Since it’s – depressingly – autumn here in London and there’s a chill in the air, we decided to comfort ourselves and bake an updated version of this cake, with wholewheat flour, Greek yoghurt to keep it moist and lots and lots of chocolate chips because….well, why not? It’s totally yummy even if we do say so ourselves!

Makes 1 loaf
125g unsalted butter
200g golden caster sugar
2 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 medium very ripe bananas, mashed roughly
170g Greek yoghurt
180g wholewheat flour
80g jumbo oats
3 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
100g-200g milk chocolate chips (whatever you prefer!)

1. Preheat the oven to 160C. Line a 9×5 inch loaf tin with a loafliner – these are perfect. If you don’t have a loaf liner to hand, grease the tin with butter and line with grease-proof paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the eggs until thoroughly combined and add the vanilla extract.
3. Fold in the mashed bananas and stir in the yoghurt.
4. One by one, add the flour, oats, baking powder and salt and mix until just incorporated.
5. Add the chocolate chips and give everything a final mix.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and place into the oven. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted comes out almost clean.
7. Cool in the tin for 30 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack. When completely cool, eat/share the Banana Cake Love immediately or store in a cake tin for up to 3 days.

So what do you think? What is your earliest memory of banana cake? Feel free to share your questions and comments below! We’d love to hear what you have to say.