OK, so I’m about 12 months late to this banana bread lockdown craze (although I did make a salted caramel swirl banana bread at some point during Lockdown 2: Electric Boogaloo…) but the urge overcame me after I came up with a way to use up some Italian mixed peel and glace cherries that were lurking in my baking cupboard. Plus there were a couple of bananas that had seen better days and had definitely reached the “only good for baking” stage.

This banana bread features a few special ingredients, apart from the glace cherries and mixed peel. I used a mix of sour cream and yoghurt instead of milk or buttermilk and a teaspoon of almond essence, which makes it feel sort-of festive along with the fruit.

It’s not a bland, dry banana bread – this is more of a (dare I say it?) moist and puddingy banana bread. It’s probably not the healthiest example of the genre but I only made this last night, we cut the first couple of slices at about 10pm before it had fully cooled down and 16 hours later, we’ve eaten half of it already.