food to glow

This is a Scandinavian-influenced banana bread that thinks it’s a cake, with optional naturally-coloured and flavoured blueberry glaze. Gluten-free, vegan and lower in sugar, my blueberry and cardamom banana cake is a delightfully soft and squidgy breakfast cake or healthy snack.

For years I have had a not-so-secret crush on cardamom.  Although I enjoy savouring the superlative pearl sugar-topped cardamom buns served at Scandinavian-style bakeries, I usually settle for a low-effort swirl of ground cardamom in my morning porridge. Or, if I am being a bit fancy, my Immune-Boosting Porridge – especially if coughs and sneezes are doing the rounds.

It’s not only me who rates this underused (at least in the UK and US) spice. In countries as polar opposite as Sweden and India, cardamom is a favoured natural flavour. For those of you who haven’t tasted or smelled cardamom, it can best be described as having a distinct sweet, warm, perfumed fragrance that once sniffed is never forgotten.

Cardamom’s uses are surprisingly varied:  flavouring Arabic style coffee (pop a whole pod into coffee grounds before brewing), in Scandinavian breads and cakes and as a staple ingredient in traditional curries. I am so taken with this wrinkly pod that I feature it as the star of a pepper blend: 4 tbsp black peppercorns, 1 tbsp coriander seeds and the seeds from 10 green cardamom pods – and store it in a refillable pepper grinder. I have perhaps taken my cardamom-love a bit far: one of my favourite perfumes is Voyages d’Hermes which, when it’s been on the skin awhile, takes on cardamom and green tea notes. Delish!

Medicinally, practitioners of Chinese medicine prescribe cardamom for a plethora of digestive complaints, some of which are common while on chemotherapy – constipation, flatulence and general stomach cramping. In Ayurvedic medicine it is seen as an important spice for balancing the three doshas (especially kappa), as well as being a warming digestive and lung stimulant. Recent animal studies have demonstrated cardamom’s capacity to reduce inflammation, as well as protect against the growth of colon cancer cells.

I already get a daily dose of both turmeric and cardamom in my Spiced Golden Turmeric Milk, but I also use it in less medicinal ways. I am bit fond of adding just a dash of cardamom in quite a few of my baked goods. It is not quite an obsession, but during the colder months it is a way of warming the tummy without being spicy; and as someone prone to cold extremities I need all of the help I can get. But even if you don’t have to wear socks in July, cardamom gives a lift to the most ordinary of recipes.

Banana bread falls into the category of ordinary recipes, I think. Deeply blackened bananas destined for the compost heap are, by the clever cook, re-purposed into a breakfast bread or healthy snack without much effort or skill (yay!).

I rarely make plain banana bread, preferring to add chocolate and rosemary oftentimes, peanut butter and jam, at others, but I also “go Scandi” too with berries, caraway and fennel pollen. Today’s banana bread is in the Scandi vein, and eats more as a cake, staying delightfully soft and squidgy.

It has a health streak too, swapping wheat flour for ground up oats and coconut flour, and calling for stevia in place of some of the sweet. I have also on this occasion made a concession to Mother’s Day (which is this Sunday, the 6th, here in the UK) by tarting it up a bit with a naturally coloured and flavoured blueberry powder glaze. If you wish to use the glaze, dollop and spread it on just before serving as it is not a traditional, sugary glaze that will set just so. Ditto the optional sugar pearls (so Scandi, I know!). Mine were left awhile before taking these pictures so they had – prettily I think – absorbed some of the glaze. I quite like the purple sugar beads topped with a few more of the pure white as you see here.

Although the cake is done here in a bundt tin do use a loaf tin as per a banana bread, baking longer as described below.

My mother is no longer alive, so Mother’s Day is always a bit of a wistful day for me. But I would like to think that she would enjoy this cake as much as we do.

Are you doing anything special on Mother’s Day? Being treated, or doing the treating? Making any luridly-glazed cakes?? Do tell. 

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