Vegan Banana Cake Recipe

I put this together my own vegan banana cake after having a really horrid and dry banana bread at a local café. What’s even worse is that they served it with butter and JAM! Plus, we always have brown bananas in our fruit bowl – mainly because we buy them thinking that the one year old in the house likes them but he really doesn’t. And as food-waste-haters, we had to use them up.

I’m always keen to sneak veg in wherever I can and courgette is the perfect vegetable for this, it’s barely noticeable tastewise and adds lovely moisture, especially when finely grated. I’ve also made this as ‘unsweet’ as possible and by making this yourself you can control how much sugar you put into it. The addition of the dried fruit helps sweeten it naturally.

The buckwheat flour can make it rather ‘bready’ so if you’re after something which is more cake-like then swapping in plain white flour will do the trick.

Wet Ingredients

• 3 large mashed bananas
• 2 tablespoons ground flaxseeds
• 1/3 cup plant-based milk
• ½ cup coconut oil, melted
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ½ grated courgette

Dry Ingredients

• ¼ cup coconut sugar
• ½ oats
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch sea salt
• 4 tablespoons chia seeds
• 1 ½ cups buckwheat flour
• 1 handful of raisins
• 2 handfuls of dried cherries (I like the Active Edge ones)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C.
2. Line a loaf pan or cake tin with either oil or greaseproof paper.
3. Squeeze the grated courgette between a couple of sheets of kitchen towel to remove excess liquid.
4. Add all the wet ingredients together and mix well until as smooth as possible
5. Add the dry ingredients one by one (sugar – leave a tablespoon aside to sprinkle on the top, oats, baking soda, baking powder, sea salt and flour) into the wet mixture. Stir well.
6. Pour the mixture into your loaf pan or cake tin, sprinkle with the coconut sugar you saved from earlier and bake for approximately 50 minutes. I always check it from about 45 minutes just to see how it’s doing! When it’s golden on the top, take it out and let it cool before removing it and cooling on a drying rack.

I’ve tried to used dried fruit for the sweetness rather than too much sugar or other sweetener. If dried fruit isn’t your thing, you can add in chocolate chips or chopped nuts. Pecans and walnuts work really well.