Egg-free banana bread

I discovered this banana bread recipe a while ago in one of my online searches for egg-free baking, and have been making it now and then ever since. It's good for sending with school lunches, taking to the park or just having as a snack.

We go through a lot of fruit with 5 of us in the house, and thankfully the kids love it. But we still end up with a few bananas going brown before we can eat them, so I put them in the freezer (in their skins) and get them out to use in baking and smoothies.

This bread is moist and flavoursome, and not too sweet. You can put the sugar in or not, depending on how sweet your bananas are and how sweet you like your bread (which really is a cake, lets face it, but lets call it bread, then we can eat it for breakfast ;-)

* see serving variations below the recipe

Egg-free banana bread

2 cups self raising flour
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar (optional)
1 cup plain yoghurt
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 cups roughly mashed banana

Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease and line a loaf tin.

Sift flour, bicarb soda and cinnamon into a bowl. If you are using sugar, stir in the sugar at this point.

In a jug, whisk the yoghurt, milk, oil and banana. Stir into flour mixture and mix until combined. Spoon into the prepared tin, smooth the top with the back of a spoon.

Bake for about 40 – 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Stand for 10 minutes before turning it out on a wire rack to cool.

Serving variations:

• I know most cafes seem to serve banana bread thickly sliced and toasted. Accompany simply with butter or spread on ricotta cheese and slices of fresh banana.

• Mostly it doesn't last long enough here to toast it and seems a shame when it's fresh. So it's nice just as is, but I have served it before with honey butter: soften butter and mix with an equal quantity of honey, then chill and slather on.

• The girls had some last night for dessert with a scoop of vanilla icecream.

• And of course I remember fondly my mum's banana cake with caramel icing on top. I was daydreaming about making a hot caramel sauce to pour over the icecream accompaniment last night but alas it didn't eventuate.

Ah, so many possibilities...