Belated birthday banana bread

It was my friend Kate's birthday back at the start of May. Before her birthday, I'd promised her a birthday cake. When her birthday did arrive, I had too much stuff on, so didn't get around to it. And then she went away for a bit, then I went to America for a bit, then I was busy again and then she went away again. Essentially, I never got around to baking her birthday cake. Unfortunately, over the course of all this procrastination, Kate also became a vegan. This proves somewhat problematic with cakes, as egg is the magic ingredient that makes baking cakes easy. But, I thought I'd give it a stab anyway. I read online that half a mashed up, very ripe large banana works as a substitute for one egg, so I thought if I was using mashed up bananas anyway, why not make a banana bread? So here we go...

Vegan Banana Bread
Ingredients

• 125ml/115g Light olive oil
• 220g Golden caster sugar
  
• 3 Very ripe bananas
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
  
• 200g Self-raising flour
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp Nutmeg
• 30g Glacé cherries
• 50g Mixed raisins

Method

1. Mix the oil and sugar together in a large mixing bowl.
2. Mash in the bananas with a fork. Add the vanilla and mix well.
3. Sift in the dry ingredients and combine.
4. Chop the glacé cherries and stir into the mixture with the raisins.
5. Pour into a lined cake tin and bake at 180C/Gas Mark 4 for 50-60 minutes.
6. Allow to cool on a wire rack.
   

When I said very ripe bananas, I meant, it!Here's the cake mixture ready for the oven.And here's the finished article.
I really didn't have very much confidence that I'd end up with anything even remotely edible when I started, but as the mixture came together, it started to look more and more like a cake, so I'm actually quite hopeful for it now.

I still owe someone else a birthday cake too, but at least that's only two weeks late so far...