Photo by Nigella
I think I have written about five Banana Bread recipes (more, I suppose if you count the Banana Butterscotch Muffins and the Chocolate Banana Muffins) and there are further variants I’ve made over the years that I haven’t taken notes on well enough to transform them into a recipe yet. Generally, my rotation seems to be my basic Banana Bread, the fabulously coffee-flavoured Italian Breakfast Banana Bread from Nigellissima, the Breakfast Banana Bread with Cardamom and Cocoa Nibs from Simply Nigella and the gorgeous Gluten-Free Banana Bread (studded with oozing chunks of chocolate) that, until now, had been the latest addition to my repertoire.
But recently I’ve been making this smokily delicious Chocolate Tahini Banana Bread lovingly and a lot. I hadn’t added it to the website, as I thought two recipes for banana bread was probably enough for now. But as I ate it just the other day, I thought it was frankly unfair to hold out on you. So here it is, a lush treat that’s simple to make and delivers subtle complexity of flavour. I suppose you could think of this as a chocolate peanut butter banana bread, only made with sesame butter (which is what tahini is, in a manner of speaking) instead. And on that note, I should say that I prefer using Middle Eastern brands of tahini (rather than the Greek or Cypriot varieties) both for the smokier taste and the less claggy texture. I learnt this from Yotam Ottolenghi, which certainly counts as a tip from the top!
