This has been declared my best banana loaf to date by my parents. High praise indeed, especially since I was merely trying to find a way to use up the rest of my pineapple not-quite-a-curd from the previous week.
I've been favouring Mary Berry's plain banana loaf recipe for most of my banana bread variations this year. It's like the victoria sponge recipe of banana breads - ridiculously versatile. It also only leaves one bowl to wash at the end which gets a massive thumbs up from me. Hurray for laziness.
This cake has such a lovely soft, juicy crumb with a hint of added texture from the desiccated coconut as it's in the cake batter as well as the icing.
The icing is oh so luscious and smooth. Pineapple curd tastes so much better in cream cheese icing than ordinary butter icing. I loved the subtle, fruity flavour against the tangy cream cheese. It paired beautifully with the soft, spiced banana bread. Banana, coconut and pineapple most certainly create a summery dream team flavour combination.
It's a pity the weather isn't feeling more tropical or summery though. It's the end of June, why is it still cold?!
Tropical banana bread
Recipe adapted from Mary Berry's Baking Bible. I had 3 bananas to use up so I increased the ingredient amounts by half. It produced a huge loaf and a couple of muffins!
150g softened butter/margarine
260g soft light brown sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1tsp ground cinnamon
3 bananas
325g self raising flour
25g desiccated coconut (plus extra to decorate)
1 level tsp baking powder
2 tbsp pineapple curd
1 tbsp milk
pineapple curd cream cheese icing
I wish I wrote down what I did at the time. I think it was this:
50g softened butter
75g cream cheese icing
125-150g icing sugar
1 tbsp pineapple curd
Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4 and line a 2lb loaf tin with baking parchment. Put all the ingredients in a large bowls and mix together for about 2 minutes until smooth and well combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin. Pour any excess mixture into muffin cases and bake them for half the time.
Bake the loaf in the middle of the oven for roughly 1 hour until well risen, firm to touch and skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Bake the loaf in the middle of the oven for roughly 1 hour until well risen, firm to touch and skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
For the icing, mix everything together until smooth. This makes quite a slack mixture (the curd was pretty runny) so feel free to add more icing sugar if you want it firmer. Spread the icing on top of the cooled cake and decorate with some toasted desiccated coconut.