I made this cake a couple of weeks ago because I had three ripe bananas and didn’t know what to do with them.
I liked the look of Genius Kitchen’s Best Banana Bread recipe, but I didn’t have any flour, and anyway, I needed it to be gluten-free. I fancied adding coconut palm sugar, as it’s slightly healthier and a whole lot tastier than regular sugar.
The experiment turned out so well, that I wanted to share it with you.
Enjoy – and please let me know if you make this recipe!
This is a useful dairy free, sugar free and gluten free banana cake recipe, as it can also be nut-free if you leave out the walnuts! Some gluten-free cakes are dry, but not this one. It keeps well for several days, but it’s moreish – I’ll be surprised if it lasts that long!
This recipe is adapted from Genuis Kitchen’s Best Banana Bread recipe.
- ½ cup coconut oil, plus more for brushing the loaf tin – melted
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 generous tsp vanilla paste
- 3 ripe bananas – mashed
- 2 eggs – medium
- 1½ cup dessicated coconut – whizzed up in a food processor
- 2½ cup oats or gluten-free oats – whizzed up in a food processor
- 1 heaped tsp gluten-free baking powder
- ½ cup walnuts – optional
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg or cinnamon – optional
- 1 pinch sea salt
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Preheat oven to 180ºC.
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Grease and line your loaf tin if necessary – I use silicone which doesn't need either.
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Melt the coconut oil and, with an electric whisk, beat with the coconut sugar and vanilla paste.
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Add the eggs and mashed bananas and combine well.
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Tip in your coconut and oat ‘flours’, plus the gluten-free baking powder, and continue to beat.
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Add a tiny pinch of fine sea salt.
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If you want to add ground spices such as nutmeg (highly recommended!) at this point, you can.
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Fold in your walnuts, if using, and pour the batter into your cake tin.
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Bake for around 45-50 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
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Leave to cool for as long as you can resist it – and serve!
I use my ancient electric beater for all my cake mixes; I find that it helps get air into gluten-free recipes.
I use dessicated coconut that I’ve powdered in a food processor rather than coconut flour, because I find coconut flour difficult to bake with. It seems to suck the moisture out of my cake mixes and I find myself adding eggs or almond milk to try to loosen the batter.
Whizzed-up dessicated coconut is a great alternative for ground almonds if you need to make a recipe nut-free.
A word on ‘cup’ as a measurement: I use small-ish mug, and fill it up to the level I would use if I was drinking something out of it, i.e. about 1cm from the top.
Photo by Yulia Khlebnikova on Unsplash
What do you think? Let me know!