Treacle, Ginger and Oat Banana Bread

The rules in our house say that if you have ripe bananas, you make banana bread. This Treacle, Ginger and Oat Banana Bread is low GI and lower in fat than a normal banana cake/bread recipe.

The 4yo says that this is the best banana bread “eh-ver” and who am I to argue with his wisdom? All the same he is my biggest fan so I admit he’s very biased.

I’ve been testing replacing my normal caster sugar with a combination of dark brown muscavado sugar and black treacle in banana bread for a while. Not only does it give the cake bread a golden caramel colour, it adds a slightly bitter note which works extremely well with ground ginger and sweet ripe bananas. You could of course use some crystallised ginger in the recipe, remove the ground ginger and reduce the sugar content even further.

As the banana bread has a long baking time, you add the oats whole to the mixture and they plump up beautifully in the oven. Replacing a portion of the flour with oats instead makes it lower GI than a bread made with only plain flour. Oats take longer for your body to digest as they are less refined.

I get away with less butter than usual in this recipe because the number of bananas keep it beautifully soft and moist. Be careful not to break them up too much in the mixing process. I slice them into the mixture at the very end. If they do turn to mush then the bread mixture will become solid and claggy when baked, rather than soft and yielding.

I use a 2 lb loaf tin and get about 12 generous slices out of it. If you slice the bread thinner you’ll get more. The banana bread freezes very well for up to 1 month, and keeps in a dry and sealed container for up to 3 days.

At 12 slices, my calorie calculator tells me that each serving comes out at 231kCal.

My shopping calculator tells me that , excluding the cost of your time and electricity, each portion costs 30c.

Treacle, Ginger and Oat Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 80g dark muscavado sugar
• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• 20g black treacle
• 2 medium eggs
• 250g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 100g oats
• 4 ripe medium bananas

Method

Preheat your (fan) oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Grease and flour a 2 lb loaf tin extremely well. I don’t bother with tin liners because if you do this properly, then the loaf will slide straight out.

Beat together the sugar, butter and treacle until they are well combined. Add the 2 eggs and beat well, it will turn a little curdled but don’t worry as it will be fixed once you add the flour. Pour in the flour, baking powder and ground ginger. Beat well again and you will get a stiff mixture. Add the oats and mix again.

Finally, peel and slice the bananas. Mix loosely into the batter. Pour the batter into your well prepared loaf tin. Using a spoon, create a small well down the middle of the mixture in the tin. This will enable the cake to rise and bake evenly.

Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven. After 50 minutes test the cake using a skewer or cocktail stick. If it comes out clean then remove the cake from the oven and allow to stand in the tin for 20 minutes before tipping out onto a cooling rack. If the skewer is sticky, bake for a further 10 minutes before testing again.

Serve this Treacle, Ginger and Oat Banana Bread as it is or with a smear of fresh Irish Butter. However my hubby loves a slice of this cake/bread warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.