This is my favourite cake—period. It’s very easy to make and open to ‘abuse’ in a good way. Having cake in your life is a good thing. You don’t need much but it has to be good. My idea of cake is something full of flavour not much added sugar or huge amounts of fat.

You will need very ripe bananas. You can vary the amount of banana—make up the rest with plant milk.

Preheat the oven to 160ºC 325F Gas 5 and line a baking loaf tin with baking paper.

In a bowl mash two to three bananas, add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and olive oil, a teaspoon of almond extract—mix well. You should have about a cup of mixture. If you not don’t worry—you can fix it later.

In a separate large bowl add a heaped cup of spelt flour, half a teaspoon of baking soda, pinch of salt, a quarter cup of date powder—if you like things sweet add more, quarter of a cup of broken walnuts and raisins. You might need to sift the baking soda and date powder. Mix well and then added the wet mixture to it. Gently fold it together throughly without over doing the mixing. If the mixture is too dry, add a little more plant milk. You want the mixture to be not quite pourable. If it gets too wet add a little more flour.

Pour the mixture into the baking tin. Tap the tin hard on the work surface and then place into the oven. Cover the tin with a silicone mat or something similar and bake for thirty minutes. Then remove the silicone mat and bake for another ten minutes. Check with a skewer or something similar—if it comes out clean and there is a certain amount of resistance when inserting it, the cake is done.

Remove the tin from the oven and let it cool for five minutes before removing it from the baking tin and letting it cool completely.

The cooking times can vary for all ovens—so what might take forty minutes in my oven might take longer in your oven or less. By experimenting with the times and mixture will you get it right for your oven.

You can adapt this cake in many ways: