How to give your Banana Bread a delicious smokey and almost savoury twist

A recipe for Lapsang Souchong Banana Bread

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“You never get over your first encounter with lapsang souchong. The stuff’s incredible, and not necessarily in a good way. The name, so satisfyingly singsong to say, is rich with promise, but when you first go nose to nose with it you can only imagine there’s been a dreadful mistake. It’s like it’s made from the bark of trees that have narrowly survived forest fires. Drink this? You must be joking!

And yet and yet … ” Adrian Chiles, The Guardian

I have been back from a work trip to California for just over a week and as much as I enjoyed my childfree week in the sun (with, even by Californian standards, unseasonally war, weather), I have happily embraced all things fall since coming back. I have made the permanent switch back to hot coffee, breakfast now features a steaming bowl of porridge with stewed fruit more often than not, I brought out the big coats and jumpers (well, the few that will still stretch over the growing bump) and made a list of all the cozy fall dishes I want to cook and bake in the coming months. 

While I’m still catching up on all things recipe testing and newsletter writing after my week away, I wanted to share an old favourite recipe of mine with all of you - the recipe for this Lapsang Souchong Banana Bread. The inspiration for this dates back many many years. Back to before I had moved to Brussels (10 years ago this year!), before I had even moved to Rome, back when my sister Helena was still living in Brussels and I was living in London as a student. Helena came to see me often – to spend time together, to try out new restaurants, to shop, to visit exhibitions. My task for our weekends was always to try and find somewhere new exciting to eat. Not an easy task while I was still on a student budget, but still very fun. One of our first adventures took us South of the river, just beyond Waterloo Station, to a modern Malaysian restaurant called Champor Champor.

Never having been to Malaysia at the time I could not vouch for the quality of the food or its authenticity. But suffice it to say that it came heartily recommended by a Malaysian friend of a friend and our meal was as delicious as we had hoped. I still remember the mouth-watering baby octopus stew we ate (and how we struggled to lift these little slippery creatures to our mouths with our chopsticks). But what I remember most vividly, both for how unusual and delicious it was, was the bread basket we shared at the start of our meal.

Truth be told, ‘bread basket’ is a bit of a misnomer as there was no actual bread involved. Instead, we shared several thick slices of a wonderfully light and spongey banana bread, lightly toasted, and numerous large pieces of what I think must have been tofu skins – thin papery sheets that shattered easily, leaving delicious crumbs all over our laps, and that were as sweet as salty, smokey and a bit spicy. The combination of the sweet banana bread with the sweet-smokey-spicey tofu skins was out of this world delicious and its memory has stayed with me ever since.

This Lapsang Souchong Banana Bread is my attempt to recreate the flavour of that bread basket. If you are not familiar with Lapsang Souchong, it is black tea whose leaves have been smoke-dried over a pinewood fire. Lapsang Souchong has a bold, even divisive flavour (see the quote from Adrian Chiles above - from a post in the Guardian aptly entitled “It took me 30 years to learn to love lapsang souchong”). While I don’t drink it as a tea very often, used sparingly, it is wonderful if you want to add a smokey flavour to marinades, ganaches or cakes. For this Lapsang Souchong Banana Bread you use less tea leaves than what is typically used to brew a single cup of Lapsang. And the Lapsang Souchong lends a subtle yet distinct smokey note to this banana bread. Delicious on its own I like to think it would be tremendous toasted and eaten with some salted butter or even served with some scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast or as an alternative to cornbread alongside a chili (sacrilegious as that might be).  

Have you ever baked or cooked with Lapsang Souchong? If so, I would love to hear about it! Leave me a comment below!

Lapsang Souchong Banana Bread 

Notes: Lapsang Souchong has a bold, even divisive flavour. While I don’t drink it as a tea very often, used sparingly, it is wonderful if you want to add a smokey flavour to marinades, ganaches or cakes. For this Smokey Banana Bread you use less tea leaves than what is typically used to brew a single cup of Lapsang Souchong. It is enough to lend the banana bread a smokey and almost slightly savoury note, but without being overpowering. Delicious on its own, I think this banana bread would make the perfect accompaniment to a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, or, simply toasted with some salted butter.

Ingredients

300g very ripe bananas (ca. 3-4 depending on size)
3 eggs
125g melted butter
Juice of 1/2 lemon
300g all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
180g caster sugar
4g lapsang souchong (ca. 1 tbsp of tea leaves), finely ground

Directions

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line a loaf tin with parchment paper.

Add the peeled bananas to a large bowl. Using an immersion blender, puree the banana until smooth. Whisk in the eggs one by one, followed by the melted butter and the lemon juice.

In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, pinch of salt, sugar and lapsang souchong. Add to the wet ingredients and whisk until you have a smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and smooth the top.

Bake for 60-65 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean (if the cake is starting to colour too much around the 40-45 minute mark, cover it with some parchment paper). Leave to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes before carefully removing the banana bread from the tin and placing it on a cooling rack to cool completely.