Vegan treats: lemon drizzle cake and banana & pecan bread

You’ll need oil instead of butter and bananas so ripe they’re almost black to bind batter like eggs for these ethical treats.

Yum: lemon drizzle cake. Picture: Guy Bailey

These vegan cakes are made with vegetable oil rather than butter. For the banana bread, make sure the bananas are very ripe (almost black) as these add sweetness and work in place of eggs to help bind the mixture.

Lemon drizzle cake

225g self-raising flour

50g ground almonds

200g caster sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

Grated zest 2 lemons

100ml vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing

2 tablespoons lemon juice

For the icing

150g icing sugar

½ lemon, juiced

Preheat oven to 170°C (fan). Grease a medium-sized loaf tin with oil and line with baking paper. Mix flour, almonds, sugar, baking powder and lemon zest in a bowl. Add oil, lemon juice and 170ml cold water, then mix until combined (don’t overmix). Pour mixture into tin. Bake for 30-40 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes; turn out and transfer cake to a wire rack to cool fully. For the icing, sieve icing sugar into a bowl. Mix in enough lemon juice to make an icing that’s just thin enough to pour over the cake (if it’s too thin it’ll just run off the sides). Serves 8

Banana & pecan bread

3 large ripe bananas, chopped

¹⁄³ cup sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing

100g brown sugar

225g self-raising flour

1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon mixed spice

50g roughly chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 160°C (fan). Grease a medium-sized loaf tin with oil and line with baking paper. Place bananas, oil, sugar, flour, baking powder and mixed spice into a food processor and pulse until combined. Stir through chopped pecans. Transfer mixture to the tin and bake for about 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cover with foil after 30 minutes if the top is colouring too much. Cool before serving. Serves 8