Blackberry Coconut Banana Bread

Sadly there won’t be many more photos of food on my rickety old garden table.  Summer has sloped off, the table is in the shed spending quality time with the spiders where it will remain until next year.  Banana bread is welcome any time of year but I think it is particularly suited to autumn/winter as it has a certain cosy feel about it.  Whenever we have a surplus of spotty bananas hanging around I always hunt down another banana bread recipe.  This one comes from Nigella Lawson and is a little bit different in that it includes coconut.  The original recipe uses dried cherries but I switched to frozen blackberries thanks to the glut in my freezer now also sadly used up.  This moist bread has a hint of coconut with bursts of gooey blackberries to add sharpness to the flavour.  I adapted this to make it gluten free and it worked out pretty well.

 

Adapted from Kitchen by Nigella Lawson

125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter

4 small ripe bananas

100g (4oz) Demerara sugar (the original recipe calls for 150g caster sugar if you want it sweeter)

2 large eggs

175g (6oz) gluten free plain all purpose flour (I used Doves Farm)

2 teaspoons gluten free baking powder

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100g (4oz) desiccated coconut

100g (4oz) blackberries (mine were frozen)

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 3, 170°C, 325°F.  Line a 900g loaf tin with baking parchment.

Melt the butter. I did this by placing the butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.  Once melted set aside to cool.   Meanwhile mash the bananas.  In a large bowl beat the sugar in to the cooled butter then add the mashed bananas followed by the eggs and mix well.  Fold in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.  Finally add the desiccated coconut and the blackberries.  Combine well and pour in to your prepared loaf tin.  Bake in the oven for 45 – 50 minutes until a skewer inserted in to the centre of the cake comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and leave to stand in the loaf tin for ten minutes before turning the loaf out on to a rack to cool.