Spiced Banana Pecan Loaf

It doesn't feel like Christmas in this part of the country yet thanks to the horrible weather! It's raining cats and dogs everyday and the temperature is not bothering to drop any further than 2-3 degrees. We got all excited the day it started snowing for the first time but unfortunately it lasted only for a couple of hours. Little T was very disappointed with Father Christmas' miserliness and decided to write him a strict letter. That's what we've been doing for the past few days. And we finally managed to put up the Christmas decorations too! And no I still havn't managed to unpack all my bags :(

 To lighten up T's mood and to fulfill my friends' demands for a Christmas cake I have been going through all kind of cake and pudding recipes but all in vain! Finally I thought of baking a banana pecan cake and spice it up a little and Voila! What's better than a spiced cake to celebrate the start of festivities! Little T already has a palette for spiced cakes and she loves this simple yet delicious Spiced Banana Pecan Loaf Cake. The recipe is adapted from the BBC Goof Food website with a few changes of mine. For the original recipe click here.

Spiced Banana and Pecan Loaf

Ingredients :

175 gm softened butter and a little extra for greasing

175 gm golden caster sugar

140 gm Whole Wheat Flour

100 gm ground almonds

3 eggs

100 ml milk

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 very ripe bananas, mashed

50 gm pecans, chopped

30 gm walnuts, chopped

A handful of muesli

A generous pinch of cinnamon powder 

A few sweet banana chips to garnish

Method :

Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. 

Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin. 

Beat the butter and sugar with an electric whisk until light and fluffy. Add the mashed bananas.

Beat the eggs, flour, almonds, cinnamon, baking powder and milk separately until smooth. 

Gradually fold in both the mixes together. Stir in the pecans and the walnuts.

Pour the batter into the tin. Sprinkle the muesli evenly on top.

Bake for 45-50 minutes until golden, risen and a skewer poked in comes out clean. 

Cool in the tin, then lift out. 

Garnish with the banana chips on top.