Banana, Pear and Raspberry Loaf

There was some fruit that had been sitting on the kitchen bench looking at me for a few days. It had got to the stage where I knew no one would eat it, so it was time for some fruit bread. There was one pear, one largish banana, and then my daughter had come across some raspberries of indeterminate age, in the freezer. Remarkably, I had seen a loaf with this combination in a supermarket catalogue just earlier, so looked for a recipe. 

Unfortunately, none of the recipes really looked like what I wanted, so I amalgamated a couple to make the nice dense, moist sort of fruit loaf I felt like. I pretty much threw the ingredients in, so these amounts are a little rough. Hopefully it works for you!

Ingredients:

1 large overripe banana, mashed

1 very ripe pear, roughly chopped

2 eggs

2 tblsp coconut oil (or olive), in liquid form (very roughly)

2 large tblsp plain Greek yogurt (I used Jalna) (again, very rough)

½ - ¾ cup frozen raspberries

½ cup brown sugar (or less)

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbs desiccated coconut

½ cup dark chocolate chips

1 ½ cups plain flour

1 ½ tsp baking soda

Method:

Turn oven on to 180°C (350F) and line a loaf pan with baking paper.

Mash banana in a large bowl, add pear, eggs, oil, yogurt and mix well. Try not to mash the pear too much, so there are some chunks left. Add the raspberries, sugar, cinnamon, coconut and choc chips and fold lightly through the liquid mix. Sprinkle the flour and soda on top and then fold lightly until all the flour is wet – don’t overmix (as for muffins).

Put the mix in the loaf pan evenly and pop in the oven for 45-50 mins. My oven tends to run hot, so it might need a little longer. When cooked (when a skewer comes out clean), let it cool a little in the pan, before removing it. Cool a little further (if you can wait) before slicing and eating. Delicious warm (while the choc chips are still gooey) and pretty good cold, too!

Family all thought it was yummy - love to hear your thoughts/experience.