Plantain banana cake

Following my experiments at the weekend I had one more ripe plantain sitting in the cupboard just waiting to be used. It looked lonely and forlorn all on its own trying disguise itself to fit in with the bananas but not quite managing to pull it off!

I had planned to make a banana cake for some time and so I thought it could be an ideal way to use up my last plantain. This was going to be a little experimental since plantain is not quite the same as a banana but I felt confident enough that it would still do the trick. I was right…..

Recipe: Plantain banana cake

(fills one 20cm loaf tin )

Ingredients

60g rapadura (or agave syrup) and a pinch of stevia

1tsp flax and 1tbs hot water

200ml soy yoghurt

2tbs coconut butter/oil (any oil would work)

1 ripe plantain and 1 ripe banana well mashed (or 3-4 ripe bananas)

40g chopped dates

200g wholemeal and white spelt flour mix (or one or the other)

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

2-3 tbs poppy seeds or nuts

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg                                 

50g dark chocolate chunks (optional but more decadent!)

Method

Mix melted coconut butter with yoghurt, flax, sugars and stevia in a large bowl for a couple of minutes. Add the mashed banana/plantain and mix until well combined. Mix remaining ingredients together in a separate bowl then add to the wet ingredients. Once well combined, pour mixture into a greased and lined loaf tin and bake at 180C for approx. 50-60 minutes. Check with a toothpick to see when cooked and keep an eye out for top browning (if it looks as though it’s getting too brown loosely lay tin foil over the tin).

The plantain worked a treat! It’s difficult to know exactly how it would have turned out had I just used bananas but I have a feeling that the plantain gave the loaf a more starchy bready texture which worked really well to give a firmer structure to the loaf as a substantial ‘mid-morning snack’ which really helped to fend off the munchies until lunch! This was lovely swerved warm (to melt the choc chunks) with a little vegan butter or cream frosting…………….. Mmmmmmm.