Are black bananas on the bench are all too a familiar scene? In the busy lifestyles of a vintage vixen there’s always seems to end up with the odd bunch of over-ripened bananas here and there.  They seem to find their way to the bottom of the kid’s school bags, fall down behind the fruit basket or become lost amongst leopard print purses, hairspray, makeup, props, car parts, keys and a bunch of other stuff that finds it’s way in my handbag.  

I’m sure many of you are in the same predicament, however once you have rounded up some astray black bananas, before you go reaching for the chook scraps bucket, I strongly recommend that you try this recipie.

Originating from the 1940s, this is a recipe that is simple, cheap and quick to make and puts those black bananas to a yummy use instead of becoming wasted food. I’m no master chef, so this recipe is definitely something that any vintage-loving vixen can make in a jiffy! 

INGREDIENTS 

• 1/2 cup of butter
• 1 cup sugar (I just use raw sugar)
• 2 eggs (yummy free-range eggs from my mum’s chookies)
• 3-4 small black bananas 
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon dutch cinnamon 
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves
• 1 cup of pecans/wallnuts/sultanas/chopped chocolate pieces or chocolate chips 

METHOD

1.  Pre-heat oven to approx 350°F.  (That’s approximately 177°C if you have a newer oven than mine that is not still imperial!)
2. In a big bowl throw in all the ingredients and combine.  (It really doesn’t matter what order you put them in.  I however tend to put the eggs in first as often I drop half the shell in too, therefore it is easier to locate bits of shell and scoop those out.  For some reason I put the nuts or chocolate in last.  I’m sure it really doesn’t matter though, but if an old fashioned wooden spoon is out of the question and you opt for using a bar mixer or blender, I would recommend mixing all ingredients except for the nuts/chocolate first, then mixing the nuts/chocolate in by hand so you still have nice chunky nutty/chocolatey pieces in the batter rather than total mush!)
3. Line a baking tray with baking paper, then lightly sprinkle flower over the tray so that your bickies don’t stick to the paper.
4. Put dollips on the baking tray, well spaced out and squash down with a spoon to flatten.
   
5. Bake for 10-15 minutes until a nice golden colour. (Keep an eye on them when you are cooking them because different ovens can have discrepancies.  Depending where you have placed the tray up the top or down the oven could mean that these little fellas may cook faster/slower than expected.  Faster is not always a good thing as they are not so tasty when they turn charcoal and your teeth break off when you try to bite into the bickies.  The resulting bickies tend to be more squishy and cake like rather than crunchy-like biscuits that you can buy from the supermarket.  Don’t fret if they look like cake-bickies as this means you have done it right.  If they look like little lumps of charcoal then I suggest you may have overcooked your biscuits.) 

This recipe makes approximately 18 bickies that look like this:

Feel free to comment about your thoughts about this recipe or any questions that you may have.  Also, let me know how you went if you tried this 🙂 

Bona petite!

♥ Mallory XXXX