Grilled Banana Bread with Tahini and Honeycomb

This recipe is from Yotam Ottolenghi's book “Plenty More”, published by Ebury Press. Using his words:

For me, tahini is the new peanut butter. It is runnier and earthier but has a similarly rich flavour and is completely impossible to resist. In many Middle Eastern cultures is is served not only as a base for hummus and other savoury sauces and dips, but also as a spread at breakfast with sweet condiments, such as grape or date syrup.

The banana bread can be baked in advance - a day or two, or even more - and then just sliced and grilled when you need it. Drizzle it with tahini as I do here, or leave out the tahini and make do with the butter, honeycomb and salt.

  • 180 gms pecans
  • 3 large ripe bananas, peeled and mashed (300 gms)
  • 275 gms soft light brown sugar
  • 3 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 140 ml full-fat milk
  • 70 ml sunflower oil
  • 275 gms plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 1½ teaspoons baking powder
  • Salt

To finish

  • 80 gms unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 60 gms tahini paste
  • 200 gms honeycomb in honey
  • ¾ teaspoon coarse sea salt

Preheat the oven to 170°C/150°C Fan/Gas Mark 3½ and line a 900g loaf tin (25 × 12 cm) with baking parchment.

Place the pecans on a baking tray and roast for 10 minutes before roughly chopping them and set aside.

Place the bananas, sugar and eggs in the large bowl of an electric mixer and beat until combined. With the machine running on a slow speed, add ½ tesapoon of salt, the milk and then the oil. Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder and, with machine still running add this to the mix. Continue to mix on medium speed for about 5 minutes, until thoroughly combined. Stir through the pecans and then pour the mixture into the loaf tin.

Place in the oven and bake for about 1 hour 10 minutes, until a skewer or knife inserted in the centre comes out clean. Leave aside for 10 minutes before removing the cake from the tin and setting aside on a wire rack until completely cool. You can now wrap the bread in foil and keep for up to 5 days, or freeze for a few weeks.

Set your oven grill to high. Cut the banana bread into 2cm-thick slices and brush with butter. Place under the grill for up to 2 minutes, until lightly toasted on one side, and remove. Drizzle over the tahini, place a chunk of honeycomp on each slice and sprinkly wiuth coarse sea salt. Serve at once.

Variations

I have to confess I (so far) have just treated it as a cake, and served it with vanilla ice-cream.

 

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