Banana and "honey" teabread

Mr Snowball has just started a new job, commuting into central London for the first time in about 10 years, so I thought I would make a gluten-free cake to cheer him up when he got home last night. I had a whole bunch of very ripe bananas sitting in my fruit bowl and normally I peel them and pop them in a bag in the freezer to use another time but found a Mary Berry recipe for banana and honey tea bread so used them "fresh".

I also realised I didn't have the thick honey the recipe calls for, and actually not even enough honey, so I used what I had and made up the quantity with golden syrup.

I'm not sure what difference the golden syrup made - perhaps it made it a bit sweeter than if it had been made entirely with honey, but the sweetness wasn't overpowering. The resulting teabread was delicious and almost half was consumed within five minutes of slicing the first slice ...

Banana and Honey Teabread

Ingredients
225g self-raising flour
¼ level tsp freshly grated nutmeg
100g margarine
225g bananas
100g caster sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon
2 large eggs
6 tbsp thick pale honey

For the topping
2 tbsp honey
nibbed sugar

Preheat the oven to 160C/Gas 4. Lightly grease and base line a 900g/2lb loaf tin with greased greaseproof paper.

Measure the flour and nutmeg into a large bowl and rub in the margarine using your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Peel and mash the bananas and stir into the flour mixture, along with the sugar, lemon rind, eggs and honey. Beat well until evenly mixed, then turn into the prepared tin and level the surface.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 1¼ hours or until a fine skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cover the teabread loosely with foil during the end of the cooking time if it is browning too much. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack.

For the topping, gently warm the honey in a small pan, then brush over the top of the tea bread. Sprinkle with the nibbled sugar.

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.