Chai walnut banana bread that is rich, moist and heavy on bananas! Filled with warm spices and topped with a creamy honey chai spiced frosting.
So I don’t make banana bread a lot. But when bananas are getting too brown to quickly, banana bread has to happen. Standard.
This time my banana bread is loaded with beautiful chai spices, my ultimate favourites:
- Cinnamon
- Ginger
- Cloves
- Cardamon
- Nutmeg
Banana bread doesn’t always look appealing. It took me a while to even make it myself. But I tried to make this banana bread look as pretty as it can be.
So, as if a warm walnut banana chai infused bread wasn’t enough. I then went a step further and topped it with a creamy frosting made with cream cheese sweetened with honey, more chai spices and finished with extra walnuts and pumpkin seeds for extra bite. Yum-eeeeeeeey.
I have totally gone wrong with banana bread so many times. It’s either too moist, too soggy or burnt. I even slightly burnt this one but I covered the heck out of it with frosting. So no one will ever know. Except now -_-
Banana bread is so hard to photograph! It just looks like a brown old loaf. But I managed to take some photos at 7:30pm. Yessssss 7:30pm just before sunset here in London. I banished the kids to the park and I finally had some time before it got dark. I legit had about 20 mins before it got dark, I have never rushed photos so much. Bleugh. I just had so much planned to do the next day (baking peanut butter and jam goodness) so it was 7:30pm or never.
At least by the end of the night I got to have a slice of this banana walnut bread with added extra frosting on my slice.
Hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did.
Chai Walnut Banana Bread with Creamy Chai Frosting
Ingredients
- 1 and 3/4 cups Spelt flour plain flour or whole wheat works fine too. I have not tried this particular recipe with gluten free flours. I have a strong feeling 1 cup buckwheat flour would work well.
- 1/4 cup oat flour just oats roughly blended into a flour, not too fine.
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 cup crushed walnuts
Wet ingredients
- 2 large ripe bananas or 3 small ones
- 1/2 cup light brown unrefined muscovado sugar coconut sugar works perfect too.
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup coconut oil or olive oil melted butter works great too.
- 1 generous teaspoons vanilla extract
Frosting ingredients
- 500 grams cream cheese
- 2 tablespoons double cream I have recently tried with vegan cream, it works well too.
- 1/4 cup honey or maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger
- 1/4 teaspoons nutmeg
Instructions
-
Preheat oven to 170*C
-
In a bowl mash bananas and mix the rest of the wet ingredients into the mashed bananas.
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In a pestle and mortar pound the cloves and cardamon till powder like. In another bowl add these spices and the rest of the dry ingredients together. (Except the walnuts)
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Mix the wet ingredients into the dry and gently fold in the crushed walnuts.
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Grease your loaf tin with oil and pour in batter. Bake for 50 mins. Cover with baking paper if the top browns to quikcly. Check with a toothpick at 40 mins. Timings depend on ovens. You don't want to underbake banana bread as it will come out to stoggy. Now let's make the frosting in the mean time.
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Once baked, take out and leave in the tin for about 10 mins. Then use a knife to slice the sides to make sure the loaf can slide out easily. Turn upside down gently on plate and it should slide right out.
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When fully cooled, frost and top with more walnuts and pumpkin seeds for extra crunch!
*Frosting*
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Really simple, just mix all the ingredients together with whisk until it becomes a frosting texture. Set aside and frost the banana bread when it is *fully* cooled down. Too warm and the frosting will slide right off.
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