This is a classic banana bread but instead of normal wheat flour I have swapped it for ground almonds and spelt flour. You could swap the whole thing for ground almonds if you wanted to make it gluten-free and I sometimes like throwing in 50g almond flakes, walnuts or roughly chopped dark chocolate. However, I have been cooking a client and he prefers it a little more straight forward and its still pretty addictive with the recipe below. It is the perfect loaf to bake over the weekend.

Ingredients:

110g unsalted butter, soft and cut into cubes

225g muscovado sugar

100g ground almonds

90g spelt flour

small pinch of sea salt

1/2 (level) tsp baking powder

1/2 (level) tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 (level) tsp cinnamon powder

350g ripe bananas (roughly 3-4)

85g buttermilk / milk with a few drops of lemon juice / plain yoghurt

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 medium free-range eggs, lightly beaten

How to Make Your Banana Bread

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees on the fan setting and grease and line a standard loaf tin (21cm long, 11cm wide and 7cm high) with baking parchment.

In a large mixing bowl add the butter and sugar and beat together with an electric hand whisk until light and fluffy. This will take about 5 minutes. Then beat in a little of the beaten eggs followed by a little of the dry ingredients (ground almonds, spelt flour, sea salt, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon powder mixed together). Make sure everything is mixed in well before adding in more eggs and flour. Continue until all is incorporated and you have a light brown batter.

In a separate bowl add the bananas and buttermilk and use a fork to roughly mash everything together. It is supposed to be a little lumpy and textured and then use a spatula to carefully fold this into the other batter. Do not over work and just take a few seconds to combine the two mixtures. Scrape into the prepared tin and into the oven for 40-45 minutes.

Check at this point to see if the top is golden brown and then remove from the oven and cover top with tin foil. Place back in the oven for a further 15-20 minutes. It is ready when a skewer inserted comes out fairly clean but be warned it can look cooked from the outside but it will need about another 20 minutes after covering. Leave to cool on a wire rack completely before dusting with a little raw cacao or cocoa powder.