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