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Brain Power Boosting Blueberry & Walnut Spelt Banana Bread

I am gonna get real with you now and speak some truths. Social media is a great communicative tool but it is also the worst thing man has invented. One too many times I have found myself feeling “upset” or “annoyed”, to some extent, due to internetty things. I woke-up one morning to discover, to my horror, that I had lost 12 instagram followers over night! I was in shock. I was anxious. I was like “WHAT HAVE I DONE WRONG?!” After a good few minutes of searching through my list of followers I slowly calmed down. I remembered real life. I remembered nature and animals. Most importantly, I remembered enjoying food in real life and how a picture of food is NOTHING in comparison. As if I got upset that a number decreased. In the real world, what does that even mean?! Is the number of instagram followers I have going to define my life? HELLZ NO!


There are people who tag photos with literally HUNDREDS of tags just to get as many likes as possible. I have a 5 tag maximum policy. Any more and it’s just vulgar. I mean to cause no offence, its just my personal preference. The worst taggers are those who tag things as #food when they are in fact pictures of themselves (unless you are a cannibal, that ent food), and people who do sentence tags #itssoannoyingstopitnow.

 

Do it for yourself, not for the likes!

…is what I now keep telling myself! It’s a bit of a catch 22 really. Of course I want people to read your blog and “like” my pictures but I think the original intention behind anything I do should be to create something that I like. Facebook “likes” and “pageviews” should just be a positive consequence of my creativity. I feel like I am rambling now. Way to lose peoples interest Karishma. Goodbye pagviews, goodbye “likes”. Haha!

Have I mentioned that I am revising? ONLY ABOUT 50 BILLION TIMES. One thing I find hard is to avoid snacking. It is inevitable that you are going to want to graze whilst giving your brain a workout. It is also inevitable that you are going to crave comfort foods. For me, my ideal revision snack is something savoury, like crisps. I have made a habit of not buying multipacks of crisps in an effort to prevent me from eating 6 packets of crisps in one day. Those big “sharing” bags are definitely a no go for me because I will eat them all. By myself. There is a corner shop just across the road from me and so far I have only popped over to get crisps once. This is mainly because leaving the house would require me to change clothes. I know. It’s a tough ol’ life.

Apart from the fact stuffing your face with crisps doesn’t really do much for you health wise, it doesn’t really boost your brain productivity. And right now, I need as much brain power as I can get. I feel like I am running at maximum capacity most days and therefore I wanted to try and help my brain along a bit my eating some brain power boosting foods. After a bit of careful google research I had myself a list of foods that are good for your ol’ think tank. The list included blueberries, walnuts and wholegrain foods (check out the the benefits of these here). All of these things can be eaten on their own but why would you want to do that when you can combine them with banana to make BRAIN POWER BOOSTING BANANA & WALNUT SPELT BANANA BREAD (only a bit of a mouthful to say!)

I can’t even remember how I came up with the idea for this but it just happened. I did my research on wholegrain/wholewheat flours as well because there are a lot out there. I ended up getting Organic Wholegrain Spelt Flour. Why did I chose this particular flour? Because there weren’t many other choices at the shop I went to! Most the other wholewheat flours available where for bread making, and as I haven’t baked with wholemeal flour before I wasn’t sure if they would work. I can tell you now I will definitely be baking with wholegrain flour again. I was worried that using wholegrain flour would make the banana bread taste too healthy and take away the satisfaction you get from eating cake, but I was wrong! This banana bread is so deliciously moist you can’t even tell that it is almost healthy! The blueberries give a nice burst of flavour through the sweetness of the banana, all topped off nicely with the crunch of walnuts. I loved this bread so much I ate it for breakfast a couple of days. In fact I would happily eat it for breakfast erryday!
I write my blog posts in chunks, in between revising so things can change at any moment during the composition of any given post. Just to update you on my current status: PANIC MODE. Left something which I have had literally 4 years to do, until the last minute. WHOOPS.

Recipe

I actually ended up using the banana bread recipe on the back of the flour packet, as the basis for this recipe!The flour I used was by Sharpham Park. I can’t emphasise enough that when it says to use an electric whisk, use a darn electric whisk! I thought I could do it without and my arms were not happy!
Serves: 8-10 (depending on how generous you are with your slices!)
Prep Time: 20 mins
Cooking Time: 35- 40 mins
Skill Level: Easy breezy

Equipment
2lb/ 900g Loaf Tin (greased & lined with baking parchment)
3 x mixing bowls (2 medium + 1 large)
Electric whisk
Sieve
Saucepan

Ingredients
100g golden caster sugar
medium eggs
130g unsalted butter (melted)
3 ripe bananas
1 tbsp clear honey
170g wholegrain spelt flour/ wholemeal flour
2 tsp baking powder
150g blueberries
30g walnuts (roughly chopped)

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 200c/180c fan/Gas 6.
  2. Using an electric whisk, beat together eggs and sugar until they become thicker and reach the light ribbon stage. (when you lift up the whisk, the mixture falls forming a ribbonlike pattern)
  3. In a separate mixing bowl, mash the bananas and then mix in melted butter and honey. 
  4. Sift the flour and baking powder into the large mixing bowl. Add the grains left in the sieve to the sifted flour.
  5. Mix the banana mix into the dry mix until combined.
  6. Carefully fold the egg mix into the banana & flour mix. Do not over mix!
  7. Mix in 3/4 of the blueberries and pour mix into prepared tin.
  8. Scatter blueberries and walnuts over the top.
  9. Place in centre of oven and bake for 30-40mins until golden brown and skewer comes out clean (don’t forget the banana is moist so the skewer may come out with banana not cake batter) 
  10. Allow to cool in tin for 15mins before moving to cooling rack. Enjoy with a nice cuppa!
BANANANANANANANANANA
(definitely a Blink 182 reference)

I just got tickets to see Mr Scruff at the Roundhouse at the end of May. Have a listen…

KBx

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