BANANA & PECAN LOAF

When I'm cooking, I love to experiment with ingredients, like adding corn to traditional shepherd's pie or coating my ribeye steak with hot English mustard and a sprinkle of brown sugar before I grill it. But I get a bit nervous when baking because the wrong amount of flour or butter could lead to disaster. Nevertheless, I winged it with this one, just going with my gut, and miraculously it turned out perfectly. Of course you can always get even more creative. Add chocolate chips or more nuts...I mean what's the worst thing that can happen? 🥴

INGREDIENTS

330 g sliced ripe bananas

220g raw caster (superfine) sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

110 ml rice bran oil

220g self raising four, sifted

generous pinch cinnamon powder

Ditto ginger powder

200g melted unsweetened butter

100g roughly chopped pecans

6-10 whole pecans for topping

2tbsp demerara or muscovado sugar

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METHOD

Butter a loaf tin and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 170C (330F)

Lazy bakers like me, fit your stand mixer with the paddle attachment and toss in the sliced bananas and sugar and mix until bananas are mashed and incorporated with the sugar.

(Not lazy, you can do all this by hand.)

Add beaten eggs, slowly while machine is mixing. Drizzle oil in too.

Stop machine and add sifted SR flour, cinnamon and ginger powders.

Using a spoon, fold in spiced flour by hand before turning on machine again.

With mixer on medium, blend flour thoroughly into the batter.

Drizzle in cooled melted butter.

Remove bowl from mixer and fold in chopped pecans.

Pour batter into prepared loaf tin and dot the top with the reserved whole pecans.

Sprinkle the Demerara or Muscovado sugar over the top.

Bake for 30 minutes, then reduce heat to 160C (300F) and bake for a further 40 minutes or until thin skewer inserted into the loaf comes out clean.

Let loaf cool in tin before removing.

Delicious warm (or cold).