Mince Pie Banana Bread

A delicious and easy to make banana bread, swirled with fruity mincemeat. Topped with an optional cinnamon cream cheese frosting. Perfect for using up leftover mincemeat

Course Dessert

Cuisine British

Keyword Cake, christmas

Prep Time 25

Cook Time 1 10

Total Time 1 35

Servings

Calories 400kcal

Author thebakingexplorer

Ingredients

For the banana bread

75 g Butter melted
125 g Light brown soft sugar
50 ml Milk any kind
1 tsp Vanilla extract or paste
2 Eggs large
3 Bananas mashed
250 g Plain wholemeal flour or regular plain flour
2 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Mixed spice
100 g Mincemeat

For the decoration (optional)

75 g Butter softened, unsalted
75 g Icing sugar
½ tsp Cinnamon
150 g Cream cheese
½ tsp Vanilla extract or paste
75 g Mincemeat

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 150C Fan/325F/Gas Mark 3 and grease and line a 2lb loaf tin
In a large mixing bowl, mix together the melted butter, light brown soft sugar, milk and vanilla extract
Add the eggs and mashed up bananas, and mix them in
Add the plain wholemeal flour, baking powder, cinnamon and mixed spice and mix in
Pour half of the batter into the loaf tin. Spoon over half of the mincemeat and swirl it into the batter. Add the rest of the batter, and spoon over the rest of the mincemeat and swirl it in
Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until a thin skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. If you're concerned it's getting too dark on top, you can cover it with foil. Leave it to cool completely
To make the cream cheese frosting, use an electric mixer to beat the butter until smooth. Then mix in the icing sugar and cinnamon until the mixture is smooth and combined
Add the cream cheese and the vanilla extract and mix in until the frosting is thick and smooth - this won't take very long so be careful not to over mix. Pipe or spread the frosting over the cooled cake
Decorate with more mincemeat. I also added some white chocolate star sprinkles for an extra festive feel!
If you have added the frosting, store in the fridge, otherwise you can store at room temperature in an airtight container. Leftovers will last for 4 days

Notes

Make sure all your ingredients (particularly the eggs) are at room temperature before you start baking.
I really recommend using light brown soft sugar if you can for this recipe, but caster sugar (also known as superfine sugar) will work well too.
For the best flavour, make sure to use a good quality vanilla extract and not an essence. You can also use a vanilla bean paste.
You can use either unsalted butter, or a baking spread, to make this cake.
For the tastiest banana bread, wait till your bananas have brown spots all over them before using them in this recipe.
I used plain wholemeal flour for this recipe for some extra goodness, but you can also use regular plain flour instead.
You will need a 2lb loaf tin for this recipe (you can test the size of your loaf tin by seeing how much water the tin can hold, 2lb will hold about 2 pints/1100ml of water). If you have a 1lb loaf tin, simply halve the ingredient amounts.
For easy lining of the tin, use a loaf cake tin liner.
Although I provide cup measurements, I highly recommend weighing your ingredients out using digital kitchen scales. It is the most accurate way to measure ingredients and will ensure the best results. Digital scales are very low cost and can be purchased for around £12 ($16.50).
For teaspoon (tsp) and tablespoon (tbsp) measurements, please use measuring spoons and not the type of spoons you eat with. Again this will ensure accuracy and provide the best results.

Nutrition