Image Map

Banana Gingerbread Loaf

Friday 22 February 2013

I am always searching for new things to do with bananas. Oi, no sniggering at the back! I meant baking-wise. It’s a side effect of my extreme fussiness when it comes to bananas. I will only eat them if I’m in the mood and they have not a speck of brown on them. As soon as they start to ripen properly they make me want to vom. So we have a lot of brown bananas knocking around the kitchen! I still want to vom when I'm mashing them into various cakes/muffins but I can put up with it for the greater good. Cake = good.

I swear by a banana muffin recipe from a Weightwatchers recipe book but I wanted to try something a little different this time and came across this recipe for Banana Gingerbread Slices in a massive baking book I own.


4oz/115g soft light brown sugar
10oz/275g plain flour
4 tsps ground ginger
2 tsps mixed spice
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 tbsps sunflower oil
2 tbsps black treacle
2 tbsps malt extract
2 eggs
4 tbsps orange juice
3 bananas
4 oz/115g raisins

The beauty of this recipe is that it takes substitutions really well and that’s a damn good thing because my baking cupboard does not contain malt extract (I left it out). Or mixed spice (I used cinnamon instead). Or indeed orange juice (we only had grapefruit juice which would not have worked in the same way!  I bunged in a bit of milk instead to get it to the normal cake consistency). I also reckon this would be lovely made with part wholemeal flour too – it doesn’t rise much in the oven.

To make it:

Sift the flour into a bowl and add the sugar, spices and bicarb.


Make a well in the centre. Add the oil, treacle, malt extract, eggs and OJ and mix together thoroughly. Mash the bananas into the mixture and stir in the raisins.


Mix well and put in your tin of choice.


The recipe calls for a baking tray but I chose to make it as a loaf cake so used my silicone loaf tin.

Bake at Gas Mark 4/180 C/350 F for about 35-40 min. It comes out looking quite gingerbready so don't worry about it looking dark.

If you use a loaf tin, give it an extra 20-30 mins so it all cooks through properly. You'll probably need to pop some foil over it partway through to avoid burning the top.

Leave it in the tin to cool for 5 mins and then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

Chop into chunky slices (it’s low fat, you might as well have more of it), make yourself a brew and it’ll disappear sharpish.


As with most of my favourite cake recipes, it doesn't look anything spectacular but it tastes bloody good.

8 comments:

  1. Yum. I am almost wishing for a piece. Make me some for after Easter? I am always wanting to try making banana loaf, but I never seem to manage to remember to use the bananas before they get waaaay past saving.

    ReplyDelete
  2. this looks divine.....love anything and everything with ginger.......looks like we're all up for baking right now!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great minds! I made a banana and yoghurt loaf yesterday as I had a gargantuan bag of 25p bananas that I bought on a whim. I shall make your version next time, it looks gorgeous. x

    ReplyDelete
  4. Aex this looks delicious and your new blog layout is gorgeous too. Also, I saw the Tom Hiddleston photos a few posts back, very nice indeed ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Good job it works well with substitutions, I don't have half of those ingredients in. D:

    ReplyDelete
  6. I really wish I liked banana cake because this looks delicious!

    Maria xxx

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ooh this looks good! I did not know that about the foil trick - v useful to know! xx

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have similar feelings about bananas - in fact I don't really like them unless they're *in* something, but I buy them for the kids so we also end up with lots of mushy ones. I've been doing a series on very very quick puddings, my banana pancake recipe will be up next week, they're yum, though probably not low fat, what with being fried. This sounds good, I will give it a try next time we have a banana surplus. I even have malt extract in the cupboard!

    ReplyDelete

I'm easily pleased - a simple comment will cheer me up no end. So do drop me a line below...

Sorry to readers who prefer to comment anonymously but I am getting clobbered with spam at the moment so have had to disable anon comments. Feel free to get in touch with me in another way!