‘Exotic’ banana & Brazil nut bread

Everyone likes bananas, right? It’s meant to be the most popular fruit in the UK (according to sales anyway), but I’ve met a fair few people in my time who detest them with a passion. I’m sitting on the fence between loving and loathing these tropical boomerangs: a banana cooked slowly on the glowing embers of a BBQ stuffed with slabs of dark chocolate and a generous slosh of rum, then I’m definitely in the love camp; and, as a child I have fond memories of tucking into a big bowl of chopped bananas drowned in lashings of golden Bird’s Eye custard. But now, to eat a banana in its natural state really fills me with revulsion – do I sound overly dramatic? Perhaps.

On holiday in Belize recently, with my banana-a-day boyfriend, I tasted bananas full of flavour and musky sweetness, and if they weren’t served with our breakfast tropical fruit platter I queried their noticeable absence. But what sealed my reignited love was the most delicious banana bread I’d ever eaten – pleasingly moist, with an intense banana flavour and a texture; somewhere between bread and a light, fluffy cake. I requested an extra slice to make its way into our lunchboxes that day. With our stomachs rumbling, after a strenuous hike and bike ride up leg-screaming hills in the baking Belizean heat, we arrived at a jaw-dropping beautiful waterfall. We sat on some rocks, admired the beauty and ate our banana bread with smiles on our glowing faces.

Back home, I knew it would be tricky to recreate the deep banana flavour using our bland supermarket varieties, but there’s certainly no harm in trying. I think organic bananas have a better flavour, so I used these, along with creamy Brazil nuts to add a welcome crunch to the bread, and also because they seemed a more ‘tropical’ partner than, say, walnuts. I’ve used a blend of light muscovado sugar and molasses; the latter adding depth of flavour and appealing pockets of dark brown sugar throughout the bread. Using a mixture of both butter and oil gives you the best of both worlds – a bit of richness from the butter as well as extra moisture from the oil. The result was moist, moreish and utterly delicious. Was it as good as the Belizean version? Not quite, but then again, the only waterfall I can see right now is the trickling rain down the windowpane – but it tastes exceptionally good and has brought a slice of sunshine into my kitchen as well as a beaming smile to my face.

3 very ripe bananas (300g peeled weight)
60g butter, melted
70ml sunflower oil
2 eggs, beaten
100g light muscovado sugar
70g molasses sugar
200g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp fine salt
60g brazil nuts, roughly chopped

1. Grease and line a 450g/1lb loaf tin with non-stick paper, and preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
3. Mash two-thirds of the bananas in a medium bowl until smooth. Cut the remaining banana into small chunks and add to the bowl. Stir in the Brazil nuts and set aside.
4. Put the sugar, eggs, oil and melted butter in a large bowl and use an electric mixer to whisk them until slightly increased in volume. Fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the banana and Brazil nut mixture until you can see no more flour.
5. Spoon into the tin and bake for about an hour until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out on to a rack to cool completely.

Golden beetroot seed cake

Autumn is my favourite time of year for cooking – although all the seasons have their moments, of course. For a food lover, going to the farmer’s market at this time of the year is an exciting experience and provides an intense visual feast for the eyes as there is such an incredible array of ingredients on offer. Myriad squash varieties with their weird shapes and vibrant coloured skin, jewel-like rainbow chard, deep greens and sumptuous purples of bobbly textured kales and cavolo nero, the dazzling green of the almost genetically modified looking romanesco cauliflower … And that’s just some of the vegetables.

It was a horribly grey and damp day and I wanted to lift my spirits by baking with one of the vegetables I had bought from my recent visit to the market. If you’ve read any of my other recipes you might have picked up that I’m partial to a bit of beetroot. I had some beautiful golden beetroot in the cupboard and although I had already used some in a beetroot, feta, pear and walnut salad I wanted to use the rest in a cake. I had previously tried Nigel Slater’s chocolate and beetroot cake and thought it was heavenly but I wanted the sunshine golden colour to shine through and I didn’t want to use chocolate. I came across another of his recipes for beetroot and seed cake, which I have adapted for the recipe here.

Instead of cinnamon from the original recipe, I daringly used cardamom. I had not paired beetroot with cardamom before but thought the subtle earthiness of the beetroot and warmth of the spice would go rather well.  The aroma whilst I was baking was gorgeous and the resulting cake was beautifully moist with a satisfying crust around the outside. It had a gentle beetroot flavour with just a hint of cardamom and the flecks of seeds provided some additional texture. Lovely! It even got the thumbs up from my 13-year-old niece who had serious reservations. It definitely put a smile back on my face and the day didn’t seem so grey and miserable anymore.

Ingredients
Butter or oil, for greasing
225g self-raising flour
Half tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
Half tsp ground cardamom (approx 7 pods crushed)
180ml sunflower oil
225g light muscovado sugar
3 free-range eggs, separated
150g raw beetroot, peeled
Juice of half a lemon
75g sultanas or raisins
75g mixed seeds (such as sunflower, pumpkin and linseed)

For the icing
8 tbsp icing sugar
A little lemon juice or orange blossom water
Poppy seeds, to garnish

1. Preheat the oven at 180C/350F/Gas 4. Lightly grease a rectangular loaf tin (20cm x 9cm x 7cm) then line the base with baking parchment.
2. Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and cardamom (or cinnamon).
3. Beat the oil and sugar using an electric whisk or in a food mixer until well combined, then introduce the egg yolks one by one, mixing after you add each egg yolk. Grate the beetroot coarsely and fold it into the egg mixture, then add the lemon juice, sultanas (or raisins) and the assorted seeds. Mix until combined.
4. Fold the flour and raising agents into the egg mixture whilst the machine is on a slow setting.
5. Beat the egg whites until light and almost stiff. Fold gently but thoroughly into the cake mixture, using a large metal spoon (a wooden one will knock the air out). Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 50-55 minutes, covering the top with a piece of foil after thirty minutes. Test with a skewer for doneness. The cake should be moist inside but not sticky. Leave the cake to settle for a good twenty minutes before turning out of its tin onto a wire cooling rack.
6. To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in enough lemon juice or orange blossom water to achieve a consistency where the icing will run over the top of the cake and drizzle slowly down the sides (about three teaspoonfuls), stirring to remove any lumps. Drizzle it over the cake and scatter with the poppy seeds. Leave to set before eating.

Xmas Eccles cakes

I absolutely love Eccles cakes! In my opinion they are certainly not cakes as the name suggests but more like parcels – whatever their title they are delicious buttery flaky pastry ‘cakes’ packed with succulent currants and a joy to eat. I have come across the nickname ‘dead fly pies’ which are more than a discredit to these scrumptious cakes as they are so tasty it doesn’t really matter what they look like.

They are definitely a now-and-again treat as obviously the butter-laden pastry makes them highly fattening but Xmas time is no time to be worrying about calories. For an even more indulgent treat, I have served these as a dessert – warm from the oven and with a big dollop crème fraiche on top. Heavenly.

With Xmas fast approaching I wanted to put a Xmas spin on my Eccles cake although I’m sure purists which shriek in horror at my tampering with the recipe. The filling is more like mince pies with a hint of orange and spice and is encased in light, but butter rich, melt in the mouth flaky pastry. They are divine. Selling it to you yet? I have tried this recipe both with shop bought puff pastry and home made. Is it worth the effort? It sure is – by a long way. Making rough puff pastry might seem daunting but it really is straight forward to make. Yes, it takes a bit of time but it’s not as delicate to handle as shortcrust pastry and once you’ve got the hang of the rolling, folding and turning process you’re away. There are many recipes out there and I’ve tried a few but I would recommend following Valentine Warner’s recipe available on the BBC food website as I had good results. I used half the quantity for the Eccles cakes and froze the rest.There is also a useful video on how to make rough puff pastry here:

Why not have a go at making these instead of the usual mince pies? If you don’t want to eat them all (and there is a real danger of this!) then take them into work and I guarantee they’ll be gone in a flash to the sound of appreciative comments from your colleagues.

Makes 12

500g puff pastry
1 egg white, beaten with a fork
Caster sugar for sprinkling

Filling
50g light brown sugar
50g unsalted butter
50ml sherry or brandy
Zest 1 orange
120g currants
50g sultanas
50g raisins
30g mixed peel
50g cranberries
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground mixed spice

1. To make the filling, melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat and add the sugar. When the sugar has dissolved, turn up the heat, add the alcohol and allow to simmer for 1 minute.
2. Pour this mixture onto the rest of the ingredients into a large bowl and mix well to combine. Allow to cool.
3. Roll out the puff pastry to about 1/2 cm thick and remove 12 discs using a 10cm/4 inch cutter.
4. Place a heaped tbsp of the filling mixture into the middle of each disc. Brush water around the edge of the pastry and then gather the pastry into the middle around the filling and pinch to seal. Make sure it’s sealed well as the filling will ooze out.
5. Turn the sealed parcel over and shape it into an oval using your hands and then gently flatten. Put each one in the fridge as you go along so the pastry doesn’t get too sticky.
6. Cut each cake diagonally a few times and place on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment. Then brush the egg white all over the top of the cake and sprinkle with caster sugar.
7. Bake them in a pre-heated oven at 200/390F/gas mark 6 for about 20 minutes until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack (although they are delicious still warm from the oven) and devour at the earliest opportunity with a nice cup of tea.