Perhaps a tad too soon...

...but here is a delicious recipe in celebration of bananas being almost cheap enough to buy again. It was inspired from my copy of 'The 21st birthday Cookery Book of the Country Women's Association in Tasmania'. Most of the recipes for meals hold pretty much no interest for me (laden with various animal parts and by-products) but the desserts and confections can mostly be made suitable for us!

Baked Banana Pudding
Serves 4-6

Ingredients

115g margarine (I use nuttlex lite)
2 med-large bananas
2 tbsp chia seeds
1/2 cup cold water
zest and juice of one lemon
1 cup raw caster sugar (or regular sugar)
1 cup of wholemeal self raising flour


Make sure you use McAlpin's!

Method

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

Mix chia seeds into water and set aside to thicken. Mash bananas in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar. Add lemon juice and zest and beat to combine. Beat in chia seed goo and bananas until well combined. Sift in flour (don't forget to re add in the bran) and beat again until combined. You may need to add a little bit of milk...the batter should be thick but not dry at all.

Pour batter into a greased or lined baking tin (I used a small brownie pan). Bake for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

After baking

Serve with ice cream!
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I served ours with half arsed frozen vanilla hazelnut iced milk cream mixture. Haha it was ok.

The pudding however was delicous! I'm kind of surprised it worked, but there isn't any reason it wouldn't have is there. It's soft and moist without being gooey and gross, it's not TOO sweet, though maybe next time I'll experiment with less sugar. It leaves room for any add ins - nuts, raisins, chocolate...And it''s really simple with few ingredients! If you don't want to see your chia seeds, try using a flax egg replacement for two eggs or you can buy white chia seeds. I don't care...they aren't noticeably crunchy in this either. If you don't like a lemony flavour, omit it and use vanilla essense. You'll probably need the milk at the end if you do that though.

I've bookmarked many many recipes in my book and I'm pretty excited about a few of them :)