A deep brown loaf, damp and heavy with blackened bananas, jaggery and cinnamon, with walnuts through the crumb and a cracked ridge on top.
Ingredients
From the TrooFoodz pantry
- Sprouted Ragi Flour 1¼ cups
Fresh
- Very ripe bananas, skins blackened 3 large
- Wholewheat atta ½ cup
- Jaggery powder 150 g
- Thick curd ⅓ cup
- Melted butter 100 ml
- Baking soda 1 tsp
- Baking powder 1 tsp
- Cinnamon powder 1½ tsp
- Walnuts, chopped ½ cup
- Salt ½ tsp
Method
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Mash roughly
Mash the bananas with a fork but stop while lumps remain — those lumps melt into damp, jammy pockets through the finished loaf.
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Whisk the wet
Beat the jaggery powder into the melted butter until it dissolves, then whisk in the curd and the mashed banana. The acid in the curd is what the soda reacts against.
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Fold in two goes
Sift Sprouted Ragi Flour with the atta, raising agents, cinnamon and salt, and fold it in twice, stopping while the batter still looks faintly streaky.
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Add the walnuts
Fold the walnuts through with three or four turns of the spatula. Every extra stir from here makes the crumb tighter and gummier.
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Tent at thirty
Bake at 175C. Once the top has set and cracked at thirty minutes, lay foil loosely over the tin — ragi browns far earlier than wheat and will darken past pleasant.
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Test deep
At fifty minutes push a skewer right to the base of the loaf. It should come out with a few damp crumbs, not batter.
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Cool before slicing
Rest twenty minutes in the tin, then turn out and cool another twenty. Cut too soon and a ragi loaf tears rather than slices.
Why this works
Ragi has no gluten to trap gas, so lift comes entirely from soda meeting the acid in curd and jaggery, and from the steam in the bananas — which is why they must be black-ripe and generously used. A small proportion of atta gives the crumb just enough structure to hold its height. Overmixing is the common failure: it makes ragi batter dense and rubbery.
Make it your own
- Butter → Coconut oil Dairy-free; pair with a plant curd.
- Jaggery powder → Soft brown sugar Lighter colour and a cleaner sweetness.
- Walnuts → Dark chocolate chunks Sweeter and richer; scatter a few on top before baking.
