This recipe has a little bit of all my favourite baking ingredients – bananas, dates, cherries and walnuts all baked together in to one delicious loaf. It’s too good not to share!
I love baking with bananas and if you’re bananas about bananas, you might want to check out some of my banana bread recipes. Some of my favourites include this Banana Cinnamon Loaf, this Spiced Banana Bread and this Nutella Banana Bread. My recipes are a reflection of my life, sometimes they’re carefully planned and well thought out and other times, they happen because I fly by the seat of my pants, and this recipe definitely falls into the latter category.
Now some people might say I’m tight, but I like to think of myself as thrifty because I hate wasting food. So when I had a few dates, a few nuts and a few cherries left after my frenzied festive baking and a few sad looking bananas in the fruit bowl, I knew I had to bake them altogether.
This bake is a real hybrid, it’s still got a lovely light banana flavour, but a wonderfully light texture, it’s definitely more cake like than a regular banana bread. The dates give the loaf some colour, the nuts some crunch and those cherries a lovely bit of chew. Altogether, it’s a lovely little loaf and even better with a bit of butter, isn’t everything? Just a word of warning though, if you want to differentiate your chunks of date from your chunks of cherry, leave your cherries whole. As you can see, I didn’t heed my own advice!
Are you highly organised or do you like to fly by the seat of your pants too?
Makes 12 slices
Ingredients
2 large ripe bananas
1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons boiling milk
100g butter, softened
175g caster sugar
2 eggs
225g plain flour
1 level teaspoon baking powder
50g glace cherries, halved
50g pitted dates, chopped
50g walnuts, roughly chopped
How to – Traditional
- Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan-forced and grease and line a large loaf tin with baking paper.
- Peel the bananas and mash in a large bowl.
- Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk and add to the bowl with the banana, then add the remaining ingredients and mix well for a couple of minutes.
- Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the top. Bake for about an hour until the loaf is well risen and golden brown. If the loaf is browning too quickly, loosely cover with foil.
- Allow the loaf to cool for about 10 minutes in the tin, then turn out and leave to cool on a wire rack.
- Serve sliced as it is or with a generous slather of butter. YUM!
How to – Thermomix
- Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan-forced and grease and line a large loaf tin with baking paper.
- Place the bananas in TM bowl and mash for 2 seconds on speed 4.
- Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk and add to the TM bowl with the banana and mix for 5 seconds on reverse speed 3.
- Add the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder and mix for 15 seconds on reverse speed 4. Scrape down sides and base of bowl and mix again for 15 seconds on reverse speed 4.
- Add the cherries, dates and nuts and mix for 10 seconds on reverse speed 3.
- Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the top. Bake for about an hour until the loaf is well risen and golden brown. If the loaf is browning too quickly, loosely cover with foil.
- Allow the loaf to cool for about 10 minutes in the tin, then turn out and leave to cool on a wire rack.
- Serve sliced as it is or with a generous slather of butter. YUM!
