Nigella Lawson Banana Bread

Nigella Lawson’s banana bread is a soft, dense loaf built on very ripe bananas, walnuts and sultanas soaked in dark rum. It bakes low at 170°C for one to one and three-quarter hours and gives you 8 to 10 slices.

She calls it the first recipe anyone nervous about baking should try, and rates it “fabulously easy” in How To Be A Domestic Goddess (2000). It’s her adaptation of a loaf from Jim Fobel’s Old-fashioned Baking Book, softened and made her own.

The rum worries people with children, and Nigella heads that off directly: the alcohol doesn’t pervade. You boil the sultanas in rum, leave them to swell, then drain. What’s left is plump, aromatic fruit, not a boozy cake.

Nigella Lawson Banana Bread

Recipe by Pinch PerfectCourse: DessertCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy

Servings

8-10

servings

Prep time

15

minutes

Cooking time

1

hour 

15

minutes

Calories

335

kcal

Total time

2

hours 

30

minutes

A one-bowl-ish loaf from How To Be A Domestic Goddess (2000), made with melted butter rather than creamed, so there’s no mixer required. The rum-soaked sultanas are what lift it above every other banana bread.

Ingredients

• 100g sultanas

• 75ml bourbon or dark rum

• 175g plain flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

• ½ tsp salt

• 125g unsalted butter, melted

• 150g sugar

• 2 large eggs

• 4 small very ripe bananas (about 300g weighed without skin), mashed

• 60g chopped walnuts

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

• Soak the fruit: Tip the sultanas and rum into a smallish saucepan and bring to the boil. Take it off the heat, cover, and leave for about an hour, or until the fruit has drunk up most of the liquid, then drain.
• Heat the oven: Set it to 170°C/gas mark 3 (325°F). Butter and flour the loaf tin, or line it with a paper insert.
• Combine the dry: In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt together well, using a wooden spoon or your hands.
• Mix the wet: In a large bowl, beat the melted butter and sugar until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas.
• Bring it together: Stir in the walnuts, drained sultanas and vanilla with the wooden spoon. Add the flour mixture a third at a time, stirring well after each addition.
• Bake: Scrape into the tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1 to 1¾ hours, until a skewer comes out cleanish. Leave to cool in the tin on a rack, and slice thickly or thinly as you like.

Notes

• Chocolate variation (Nigella’s own): Replace 25g of the flour with good cocoa powder, not drinking chocolate, and add 100g of dark chocolate cut into smallish chunks. Shop-bought chocolate chips work just as well.

FAQs

Can I make it without the rum, and is it safe for children?

Nigella addresses this head on. She says the alcohol doesn’t pervade the finished loaf, because you boil it off and then drain the fruit, so you’re left with swollen, aromatic sultanas rather than a boozy cake. It’s aimed squarely at nervous bakers and family kitchens.

If you’d rather leave the rum out entirely, soak the sultanas in hot black tea or orange juice instead, using the same boil-and-drain method. I tested it with strong English Breakfast tea and the fruit still plumped beautifully, though you lose the faint caramel note the dark rum gives. Bourbon and dark rum both work as Nigella writes them; the rum is a little rounder.

How ripe should the bananas be, and does the number matter?

Very ripe is the whole point, so wait for skins that are heavily freckled with black. Nigella calls for 4 small bananas but pins it to a weight: about 300g mashed, without the skins. That weight is what to trust, because banana sizes vary wildly.

Underripe bananas won’t mash smoothly and the loaf turns out bland and drier. If your bananas are large, two or three may already hit 300g, so weigh rather than count. Freezing overripe bananas whole then thawing them works too; they collapse to a purée that folds straight in.

Why does it bake for up to 1¾ hours, and how do I know it’s done?

The low 170°C/gas mark 3 and the deep, narrow tin are why. A loaf this size holds a lot of wet batter, and a hotter oven would set the crust long before the middle cooked, leaving you with a raw seam. Slow and low lets the centre catch up.

Start checking at the one-hour mark with a skewer, which should come out more or less clean, and give it up to 1¾ hours if it needs it. In our kitchen it usually lands around 1 hour 20. If the top browns too fast before the middle is set, lay a loose piece of foil over it.

Can I make the chocolate version she mentions?

Yes, and it’s Nigella’s own tweak rather than anything we’ve invented. She swaps 25g of the flour for good cocoa powder, not drinking chocolate, and folds in 100g of dark chocolate in smallish chunks. She made it for friends who are more chocolate-crazed than she is.

Keep the cocoa swap at 25g and no more, because cocoa is drying and too much will tighten the crumb. Shop-bought chocolate chips are a fine shortcut. If you want a pudding that leans fully into chocolate instead, chocolate raspberry pudding cake is the richer direction to go.

Do I really need to drain the sultanas?

Draining is the step people skip, and it matters. If you tip the leftover rum straight into the batter, you add loose liquid the recipe wasn’t balanced for, and the loaf bakes wetter and can sink in the middle. The fruit should have absorbed most of the rum by the time you drain, so you lose very little flavour.

Give them the full hour to soak if you can, since that’s when they swell properly. The melted-butter method here is the same low-effort approach behind ginger and walnut carrot cake, another walnut-loaded loaf you mix by hand rather than creaming.

How should I store it, and can I freeze it?

Nigella doesn’t give a keeping note for this one, so this is our testing rather than hers. Wrapped well, mine stayed good for four days at room temperature and actually improved on day two, once the banana flavour had settled and the crumb firmed up. Banana loaves dry out faster than butter cakes, so keep it tightly covered.

It freezes cleanly, either whole or in slices, for up to three months; thaw at room temperature and it comes back close to fresh. A slice warmed briefly and spread with butter is how most of ours disappears. It travels and keeps far better than something like prodigious pavlova, which has to be eaten the day it’s made.