Is it a banana loaf, a banana cake, a banana bread or a banana tea bread?!
We thought long and hard about the name of this cake, and hence the naming of this website, as this is not exactly a clearcut thing. The combining of flour, eggs, sugar and fat with bananas makes it, in our book, a cake. But say “banana cake” out loud, and most people will thing of a round cake, as they would if you said “carrot cake” . Since we bake this cake in a loaf tin and slice it into rectangular slices then “Banana Loaf” seems a good name.
But we cannot let this go by without acknowledging the influence of our friends in the USA. To them, this is not a cake at all - it’s a bread. If you offered this delicious banana loaf cake to an American, they would tell you you are eating banana bread. They would define it as a “quick bread” - a yeast-free bread that uses baking powder as a leavening agent. In addition, an American would probably eat banana bread at breakfast time, in the same way that they eat muffins at breakfast time.
Back here in the British Isles, on the other hand, we are more likely to serve a slice of banana loaf cake with a cup of tea at 11am or 3pm, making its other name, the “tea bread” perhaps equally apt. But since we have another fabulous recipe (for a future website maybe?) we call tea loaf at home, which actually contains cold tea, it seems to us that a tea bread or tea loaf should have actual tea in it and therefore we return to our initial conclusion of naming this cake “Banana Loaf Cake”.
Whatever we call it and wherever we hail from, there is no arguing that it is a delicious creation and we’re sure you’ll enjoy it, for breakfast, lunch, or tea.