Busy Girl Bakes: Banana Bread

Banana bread is such an easy way to satisfy a cake craving – plus it contains fruit, so is clearly one of our five-a-day, right?! What we love about this cake is that it’s pretty much throwing everything together, mixing it up and then baking to perfection. This Mary Berry recipe has a final finishing flourish of a drizzled honey and sugar topping – delicious.

Perfect for using up those bananas at the bottom of the fruit bowl, banana bread is an ideal weekend snack or energy boosting work treat to beat the 4pm slump. Give it a go!

This banana bread – technically called Banana and Honey Teabread – is from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible, our current go-to cookbook for delicious teatime treats from the queen of cosy baking.

Easy Banana Bread Recipe

Ingredients

• 225g self-raising flour
• ¼ level teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 100g butter
• 225g bananas (approx. 2 medium bananas)
• 100g caster sugar
• Grated rind of 1 lemon
• 2 large eggs
• 6 tablespoons thick pale honey

For the topping

• 2 tablespoons honey
• Crumbly sugar for sprinkling (we used demerara)

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to Gas 3/160C (fan 140C). Grease a 2lb loaf tin and then line the base with baking parchment.
2. Measure the flour and nutmeg into a large mixing bowl. Rub in the butter using your fingertips until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.
3. Peel and mash the bananas. Stir them into the flour mixture, along with the sugar, lemon rind, eggs and honey.
4. Beat the mixture well then pour into your prepared tin and make sure the surface is level.
5. Bake for around 1hr 15mins – until a skewer into the centre of the cake comes out clean. (If it’s browning during the end of cooking, cover loosely with tin foil.)
6. Leave to cool in the tin for about 5 mins then turn out and peel the parchment off the base. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
7. Make the topping: warm the honey in a small pan or microwave and brush over the top of the cooled banana bread. Sprinkle with the sugar.
8. Eat and enjoy!

That’s it – all that’s left to do is tuck in!

Get baking

Trying out this banana bread recipe? Share a pic of your finished cake with us – @tweetjanes.