Sunshine Banana Bread with Honeyed Mascarpone
Banana bread is extremely popular in the Caribbean and everyone has their own favourite recipe. This is one of mine – it’s an easy recipe and I love the addition of coconut and walnuts, which add a lovely texture. Banana bread is great at any time of the day: for a mid-afternoon snack, as a dessert, or even for breakfast with your morning coffee or tea. Try toasting a slice before serving
with my honeyed mascarpone – yum!
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6. Butter and line a loaf tin with baking parchment.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until thick and creamy. Add the eggs, bananas, walnuts, vanilla extract, coconut and milk, and gently stir together until well combined. Sift in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and mixed spice and gently fold in. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for 40–45 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.
Leave the banana bread to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely … if you can wait that long!
Meanwhile, make the honeyed mascarpone. In a bowl, blend together the mascarpone, sugar, honey, lemon zest and juice, until well combined.
Serve slices of the banana bread topped with a spoonful of the honeyed mascarpone and drizzled with a little more honey, if you like.
Ingredients
- For the Banana Bread
- 125g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
- 100g soft brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 2 ripe bananas, mashed
- 50g walnuts, chopped
- 1½ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp shredded coconut
- 1 tbsp milk
- 225g plain flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp mixed spice
- extra drizzle of honey, to serve (optional)
- For the Honeyed Mascarpone
- 250g tub of mascarpone
- 1 tbsp icing sugar
- 1 tbsp honey
- zest and juice of ½ lemon