Polenta Banana Bread - Daring Cook's August 2012 Challenge - Cornmeal

Hmm... I'm late.
Better late than never.

This month, Rachael from pizzarosa challenged us to make something from cornmeal. This is the recipe. Cornmeal is a kitchen staple, and in most Australian supermarkets, it's most well known as polenta.

We have a big Mediterranean influence in Melbourne, so we do cook a fair bit with polenta.

But, if I can choose to make something sweet rather than savoury, I will.  As polenta is rather rustic in texture, I decided to do a simple banana cake, suitable for a bit of brekky, morning tea or afternoon tea, and it's mostly guilt free, healthy, if you delete the sugar from recipe, but I didn't use much.

The ingredients:
3 eggs
1 ripe banana, mashed
100ml olive oil
100g SR flour
100g polenta
100ml extra light olive oil
150g chopped dates
2 table spoon of fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar, half white half brown.

It's simple, whisk the eggs with sugar, until ribbony, then slowly add in olive oil.  Add in the juice, and banana, then sift in self raising flour and add polenta. I usually add dates last, as it's the chunky bits.
Bake in 150C fan forced oven for 50 min in a well greased and lined loaf tin.

I always love the polenta in the cake, as it's given us a bit more texture, I don't need to use nuts in those loaves.