Gluten free banana bread with passionfruit cream cheese icing

Gluten free banana bread with passionfruit cream cheese icing

• 29 Jul 2023

When I was home in Brisbane, Dad had what seemed like kilos of over ripe bananas. I froze some and also used a few to make a loaf of Flour Bakery's famous banana bread. I'd forgotten just how delicious it was and ate most of the loaf myself, slathering each slice with cream cheese. The following day my gluten free friend visited and I had nothing to offer her. I was sorry I hadn't thought to make a gluten free version of the banana bread.

With that in mind, I took some of the manky bananas home with me to Sydney just so I could work on creating a gluten free version. I made a half batch of the mixture and the loaf was so tiny, I didn't feel I could post that to the blog so I made a second, larger version.

Not all bakes run smoothly and my gas oven went out during the first 30 minutes of the bake and I was left with a slightly sunken cake. I'd always planned to ice the cake and made some passionfruit cream cheese icing to fill in the depression. 

Here's the recipe for you which makes a standard loaf. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup, a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Gluten free banana bread with passionfruit cream cheese icing

Ingredients
150g GF self raising flour 
10g potato starch/corn flour or tapioca starch
½ tsp bicarb soda

¼ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp sea salt flakes 
50g almond meal
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g vegetable oil 
340g mashed over ripe bananas 
30 mls sour cream or yoghurt
1 tsp rum

Passionfruit Cream Cheese Icing
40g unsalted butter
50g room temperature cream cheese
150g icing sugar
Pinch salt
pulp of 1-2 passionfruit

Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C conventional, with the rack in the centre of the oven. Grease and line a standard loaf tin with baking paper. 

Sift together the flour, cornstarch, bicarb soda, cinnamon and salt in a bowl. Stir through the almond meal then set aside.

With a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat together the sugar and eggs on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Switch to low speed and slowly drizzle in the oil, taking your time. Add the bananas, sour cream and rum, and continue to mix on low speed just until combined.

Use a rubber spatula to fold in the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. No flour streaks should be visible. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 1 to 1¼ hours. The loaf should be golden brown on top and a skewer inserted into the cake should come out clean. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes, the remove from the pan and let cool completely on the wire rack before topping with the cream cheese icing. 

Icing
Place all the icing ingredients, except for the passionfruit, into the bowl of a stand mixer then beat for 10 minutes on low speed until the icing is fluffy and ultra-creamy. It should hold its shape and not be melty or slack. If it slumps, chill and re-beat. Just before using, stir through the pulp of 1 passionfruit. You can drizzle a little more passionfruit pulp over the icing just before serving if you like.

Well as expected, this banana bread was a hit and every-one loved the passionfruit cream cheese icing.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian