Rum Banana Bread

This Rum Banana Bread recipe is taken from Nigella Lawson’s fantastic cookery book ““. It is very easy to make and involves the winning combination of bananas with rum soaked raisins or sultanas. It was one of the first baking recipes that I made.

The riper the bananas, the better the taste. If you have really squishy, black bananas at the bottom of your fruit bowl, this is good way to use them up! If you have bananas that are on their way to black squishiness, you can just pop them in the freezer and then defrost when you are ready to make this cake. When they are defrosted, they will be really soft and squishy – you would not want to eat one as it is – but they are fine to use in cakes like this one. I often make this recipe using frozen bananas and the taste and texture of the finished cake is no different from when I use fresh bananas.

This cake does contain alcohol but the cooking process means that you just get a mild rum flavour. Don’t be worried about giving this cake to children – mine have all eaten it from when they were very young. However, if you are teetotal or do not wish to use alcohol, you can soak the raisins in water or apple juice.

Rum Banana Bread

Author: Tastebotanical
Prep Time: 20
Cook Time: 60
Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Yield: for 8 people 1x
Category: Cake
Cuisine: English

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Description

This recipe, with minor variations, is based on one in Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess”. It is very easy to make and the combination of bananas, rum and raisins is fantastic.

Ingredients

Scale

100 g raisins or sultanas
75 ml rum
125 g salted butter (add 1 teaspoon salt if using unsalted butter) – melted
160 g sugar
2 eggs
4 or 5 very ripe bananas
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
175 g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

Instructions

Put the raisins or sultanas in a bowl. Add the rum. Heat in the microwave at “high” for 1 minute. Cover and set aside. This will allow the dried fruit to absorb the rum.
Set your oven at 170 C or Gas Mark 3.
Grease a medium-sized loaf tin (23 x 13 x 7 cm).
Put the melted butter and sugar into a large bowl. Add the eggs and stir to combine.
Mash the bananas and add them to the bowl together with the vanilla essence.
Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture. Add the rum-soaked dried fruit. Stir to combine.
Pour the cake mix into the prepared loaf tin. Put in the oven and cook for 1 hour.
Remove from the oven and place the tin on a cake rack until cool. Remove the cake from the tin.

Notes

This is a great recipe for using up old bananas – the squishier the banana, the better the flavour. You can freeze old bananas until you are ready to make the cake.

You can make a non-alcoholic version by replacing the rum with apple juice or water.

This cake is lovely on its own. However, you can spread the slices with butter if you are feeling indulgent!

You can keep this cake for 3-4 days, wrapped in foil, and it will improve in flavour.

Keywords: bananas, rum, raisins, cake, banana bread,