Banana and pecan bread

Bananas are a very divisive subject in our house. Adam hates them with a vengeance, I don’t mind a ‘lady finger’ every now and again and Paul loves identifying them (‘nah-nah’) but will only eat them at daycare, never at home 🙃. So when I found myself with a couple of small, very over-ripe bananas the other day, I decided the only solution was to make banana bread. I’ll confess, part of my desire to whip up a loaf was the fact Adam won’t eat it and Paul isn’t partial to cake – I knew I’d be able to slowly devour my sweet treat over the course of several days…

As with so many recipes in my repertoire, I used the BBC Good Food vegan banana bread recipe as my guide, just making a few little tweaks.

What you’ll need

• Three large over-ripe (black) bananas
• 85ml of vegetable oil
• 100g of brown sugar
• 225g of plain flour (BBC Good Food says that can be substituted for self-raising flour, just knock back the baking powder to two teaspoons)
• three teaspoons of baking powder
• three teaspoons of cinnamon (or mixed spice)
• optional 50g of dried fruit or nuts (I used pecans)

How to do it

1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180°C and oil and line a loaf tin. In a large bowl, mash together the banana and the oil, then add in the sugar, mixing to combine.
2. Add in the flour, baking powder and cinnamon, and combine well. Then add in any fruits/nuts and mix until combined.
3. Cook for 20 minutes. If the loaf is browning, cover with foil and then cook for another 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. (I like my banana bread to have a nice crunchy crust and a deep golden glow, so I cooked mine for about 30-35 minutes uncovered.)
4. Allow to cool slightly in the tin, and then turn out onto a cooling rack. Enjoy whilst warm… or on day two, three or four slightly warmed and buttered well.

Quick and easy – just how I like my baked goods! This is quite a dense banana bread, so if you’re looking for something light and fluffy, this perhaps isn’t it. I quite like that heaviness though, it makes it a very satisfying snack.

Have a wonderful week.

M. x