Ready Steady Cook Challenge – Dessert – Beetroot and Banana Bread

This is my third and final course for LadyRaven’s Ready Steak Cook challenge. I’d like to thank her for hosting this fun event and I hope it gets turned into a regular feature on her blog.

When I received my list of ingredients from Sam I decided almost immediately that I wanted to try and use the beetroot in my dessert course. Initially I wanted to use this beetroot cake recipe but there where so many ingredients that I couldn’t use I had to think of something else. I’ve used Browniegirl’s banana bread recipe previously with great success, so I thought with a few small alterations I could turn this into a beetroot and banana bread.

I’ve included the recipe here with my alterations in brackets.

Ingredients:

• 180ml Milk
• 115g Butter
• 300g Sugar
• 275g Self Raising Flour (Used a bran-rich self-raising flour)
• 2 Large Eggs at room temperature
• Pinch Salt
• 4 Ripe Bananas (Used 2 bananas (about 90g unpeeled) and the equivalent weight in puréed beetroot)
• 2 ml Bicarbonate of Soda (Omitted this as it was not an allowed pantry ingredient)
• 12,5ml extra Milk (Omitted this as I didn’t use the bicarb)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190^oC (Adjusted this for my table top oven to 160^oC)
2. Grease & flour a large or 2 small loaf pans
3. Heat butter and milk until butter has melted
4. Sift flour & mix with sugar in a large bowl (Didn’t sift the flour as it had bran added to it)
5. Beat eggs & salt together until light and frothy
6. Mash bananas well then add to the egg mixture (Mashed the bananas with the puréed beetroot)
7. Stir banana mix into the dry ingredients
8. Add milk & butter and fold in to form a very soft batter
9. Stir the baking powder into 12,5ml of milk and fold in last (Omitted this step as bicarb was not an allowed pantry ingredient)
10. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 25 minutes
11. Change oven temperature to 180^oC and bake for another 20-25 minutes until lightly brown and skewer comes out clean (Adjusted this for my table top oven to 150^oC and baked for 35 minutes)
12. Allow to cool slightly before serving

The batter had such a vibrant pink colour which I had hoped would carry through to the final product. Unfortunately upon slicing the baked loaf I was not greeted with the happy pink colour I had been hoping for, but rather a pinkish-orange hue.

The bread itself has a rather distinctive flavour of both beetroot and banana, perhaps an uncanny pairing but not unpleasant. A perfect accompaniment to an afternoon cup of tea and would not be unwelcome as a sweet end to a meal, perhaps served warm with custard alongside a cup of coffee.