This Hairy Bikers banana bread mashes three ripe bananas into a spiced raisin loaf, so nothing gets wasted. It comes from One Pot Wonders at around 300 calories a slice, and takes 75 minutes start to finish.
“Use your loaf and make this, then enjoy a slice with a nice cup of tea,” urges One Pot Wonders, and the recipe earns that confidence. It swaps butter for vegetable oil while adding a full tablespoon of mixed spice, which is far more than most loaves dare.
Five minutes with the kettle decides how this loaf turns out, because the raisins soak in boiling water before anything else happens. Dry fruit would pull moisture from the crumb as it bakes, but plumped raisins stay soft inside the finished bread.
Hairy Bikers Banana Bread Recipe
Description
A generously spiced fruit loaf built on overripe bananas, mixed from one bowl in minutes because there is no creaming stage. The oil-based batter bakes into a tender crumb that stays fresh all week, though it tastes best toasted with salted butter.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Prepare the tin: Preheat the oven to 180°C/Fan 160°C/Gas 4, then line a large 900g loaf tin with baking paper.
- Plump the raisins: Put the raisins in a large bowl and cover them with boiling water, then leave them for 5 minutes before draining and setting them aside.
- Make the batter: Mash the bananas well in the same bowl, then whisk in the oil and sugar with a generous pinch of salt. Beat in the eggs one at a time, so the mixture stays smooth.
- Fold in the dry ingredients: Sprinkle over the flour, mixed spice, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, then fold everything together carefully before stirring in the raisins.
- Bake the loaf: Spoon the batter into the tin and bake for about an hour, until well risen and slightly cracked. A skewer should come out clean.
- Cool and serve: Leave the loaf to cool in its tin, then slice it plain or toasted with butter.
FAQs
How do the Hairy Bikers make their peanut butter banana bread?
Their Everyday Winners book has a second loaf built around a swirl of 125g crunchy peanut butter, 75g cream cheese, 50ml maple syrup and 50g chocolate chips. To build it, half the batter goes into the tin before the swirl mixture, then the rest goes on top with just two or three stirs, so ribbons run through the crumb. That version also uses melted butter and cinnamon instead of oil and mixed spice, which shortens the bake to 50 or 60 minutes.
Why does this recipe use oil instead of butter?
Oil stays liquid at room temperature while butter sets firm, which is why oil-based loaves keep their softness for days after baking. It also removes the creaming stage entirely, so the whole batter comes together with nothing more than a whisk and a spoon.
How ripe do the bananas need to be?
The book wrote this recipe specifically for mottled, mushy bananas most people would bin, because the darker the skin, the more starch has turned to sugar. That extra sugar deepens the flavour and helps the loaf brown properly. Firm yellow bananas mash badly and taste faintly starchy, so leave them a few more days.
A tablespoon of mixed spice seems a lot, is that right?
Yes, and it is deliberate, because most banana loaves use a timid teaspoon of cinnamon that vanishes behind the fruit. The full tablespoon carries cinnamon, nutmeg and clove through every slice instead, which turns plain banana sponge into a proper spiced tea loaf. If you bake for children, half a tablespoon still reads clearly.
How should I store the loaf, and does it freeze?
Kept airtight it genuinely holds for four to five days, and the spice flavour actually peaks from day two. It freezes well sliced, so you can pull out one piece at a time and toast it straight from frozen. The book’s own serving advice is toasted with salted butter, which revives even a week-old slice. If your bananas keep over-ripening faster than you can bake, their banana and pineapple cake takes three more.
