Dotti is a 92 year-old woman who loves to cook sweet treats. For the past 2 years she has been coming into my workplace every Saturday, making me try some of her inventions or her traditional recipes, which have been passed on for generations.
Some of these recipes shared have been within her family for 70 years. She told me that she hasn’t shared her recipes with anyone before, so I’m privileged not just to eat them, but to find out how she does it. Dotti doesn’t go by exact measurements or steps; it comes naturally to her, something that I aspire to at her age. Going strong for a 92 year-old, she loves having friends over, insists on making me a cake every time I go over (even though she is cooking something else for me), and has two chickens which she hasn’t named.
Banana Bread
You will need:Banana2
Butter
2 cups of flour
Sugar
Teaspoon of baking soda
Teaspoon of salt
Teaspoon of ginger
Teaspoon of cinnamon
2 eggs
3 ripe bananas
Plain yoghurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Recipe:
1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.
2. Grease a pan with butter. “Make sure you put the butter everywhere”
3. Take some butter and put it in a pot over the stove, but only for a little while. “It should start to foam to a nice brown colour. Take it off the stove immediately-don’t let it burn”
4. Mix the flour, half a cup of sugar, a tiny bit of baking soda, salt, ginger and cinnamon.
5. In a different bowl, beat the eggs, and then add the banana. Make sure the banana is mashed before putting it in the bowl with the eggs.
6. Add the yoghurt, the melted butter, and vanilla extract. Make sure you mix this.
7. Pour both the mixtures into the same bowl. “Mix them around but don’t over mix or it will lose its flavour of the ginger, etc.”
8. Pour them into your pan. The batter will look like this:
Banana1
“Don’t worry if it looks lumpy; this should go down when cooked. If it looks lumpy it just means there’s a lot of banana or lots of flavour in that spot”
9. Put it in the oven for about 1 hour.
“The bread should look raised and golden. If it’s a little burnt on the edges that’s fine. Don’t worry.”
“I use to cook this all the time for my kids, as well as the smell; it fills the whole house”