Sometimes in life, you just gotta bake. Be it for when you’re feeling down and just really need a piece of pie, or in severe cases of the ‘I bought way too many bananas at the supermarket, now what?' jazz. Throw in some sweet pumpkin and the latter was the deal of the day for me. So what does one do with overripe bananas, sweet pumpkin that needs to go and some blackberries that needed purpose? You throw it all together, dig up some stuff from the pantry et voila: your boyfriend/friends/colleagues will love you. I promise, ‘cause no-one I offered a piece of this goodness to was disappointed.


First up is the making of the pumpkin puree, in case you have none pre-made. I know there’s a canned version available, but I tried that once and it was just.. ew. As long as my supermarket sells fresh sweet pumpkin, I’ll stick to the easy process of making my own delicious puree. Chop up the pumpkin in small to medium sized chunks, put them all together in an oven dish & bake at about 180°C until they look golden and yum - this should be about 45 minutes. Remove the peel if you hadn’t done that already & use a fork or kitchen tool to mash the pumpkin until you end up with a creamy puree. You’ll need one cup of pumpkin puree for the recipe.

Now for the bread! Start off by pre-heating your oven at 180°C. Throw the 1 cup of pumpkin puree in a bowl, and add 2 mashed bananas, 2 eggs, half a cup of maple syrup, half a cup of light brown sugar & 5 tablespoons of melted coconut oil. In a separate bowl, throw together 2 and a half cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of baking soda and a pinch of salt. Now it’s time to choose some spices - I like adding ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and speculoos mix - about a small teaspoon of each, or some more or less depending on how spicy you’re feeling. Now you can throw the wet & dry mixture together, fold everything together until just combined and add some nuts or dried fruits if you like. I added walnuts just because I had a bunch of them in my pantry. After transferring the mixture into a greased loaf pan, I put the blackberries into the batter - about a centimeter deep. This now needs to bake for about 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Wait at least half an hour before cutting the cake - and then.. Enjoy!

Based on this recipe.