Strawberry Shortbread Banana Bread (Vegan GF)

A rich, moist and sweet banana bread studded with shortbread biscuits and juicy fresh strawberries. Sandwich this vegan and gluten-free banana bread cake together with two-tone strawberry buttercream and decorate with strawberry shortbread sandwiches.

Finally, the banana bread for August is ready to share! Earlier in the year, I was so prepared for my banana bread of the month but lately, I’ve been making them a bit later on and rushing to get it all ready to share with you, but this one is worth the wait! While I have the whole year already planned out in terms of flavour, time gets away with me and recipe testing takes time, but I am so excited for this one!

This Strawberry Shortbread Banana Bread is:

• Moist and sweet
• Juicy from the strawberries yet crunchy from the cookies
• Summery and wholesome
• Light and delicious
• Naturally vegan and easily gluten-free
• Impressive to serve to friends and family
• Easy to make in a couple of steps
• A show-stopper two-tiered cake or loaf cake

This cake is a real joy to make and eat, I think it’s the lovely colours that make me smile so much. The banana bread batter comes together effortlessly and is made from simple wholefoods:

• Ripe banana: this is essential for banana bread. The riper the better and I always weigh my bananas for the best results.
• Sunflower oil: or you can use vegetable or melted coconut oil. I prefer sunflower oil because of the light taste and the smooth texture it lends the batter.
• Plant-based milk: just a little for a lovely moist batter. Any carton of milk will work here like oat, almond, soya or coconut.
• Coconut sugar: I love the rich flavour of coconut sugar when baking but golden caster, white caster or light brown sugar will also work. I have just discovered date sugar, too, which is delicious!
• Lemon juice: this forms a vegan buttermilk when it is mixed with plant-based milk so it helps to bind the batter. You can also use apple cider or white vinegar, too.
• Vanilla essence: for the sweet flavour. If you don’t have any, you can skip this.
• Plain or GF plain flour: this keeps the batter really light and airy. if using GF fluor use a 1:1 baking blend with xantham gum or add your own.
• Baking powder and bicarbonate of soda: for the rise.
• Fresh strawberries: chop them small and toss in a little bit of four to prevent them from sinking in the batter and making the loaf too wet. These are so summery and delicious, although if you are making this at other times of the year, other small fruits will work, like chopped plum or apple. I prefer fresh but you can use frozen strawberries, too, as long as they are in small pieces.
• Vegan shortbread: I use my favourite recipe from my Vegan Strawberry Shortbread Sandwiches. I save the large cookies for the decoration and then use the smaller cookies from the scraps for the cookies inside. You can use shop-bought vegan and GF (if needed) shortbread if you like.

These are the ingredients we need for the Strawberry Shortbread Banana Bread and I hope you have most of them to hand. The method is simple: blend together all the wet ingredients until really smooth. I prefer doing this rather than mashing the banana, but you can mash the banana if you prefer and then stir in the wet ingredients. Now sift in the dry ingredients, whisk to a thick batter and fold in the strawberries and broken up shortbread before baking until golden and smelling amazing.

For this recipe shoot, I have divided the batter into two 6-inch cake tins for a two-tiered cake but you can also bake this as a loaf cake, too. Allow the cakes to cool fully before assembling and frosting the Strawberry Shortbread Banana Bread.

To decorate the cake, there are a couple of steps:

• Make the two-tone strawberry frosting: there is a full description in the method on how to make this.
• Spread the frosting all over the bottom cake: I like to pipe this around the edges with a star-shaped nozzle.
• Place on the second cake: spread lightly with the frosting
• Decorate with the Vegan Strawberry Shortbread Cookies: and pipe on some frosting rosettes in between the cookies.

If you are making a loaf cake:

• Make half of the buttercream: pipe or spread on top of the loaf
• Top with the Vegan Strawberry Shortbread Cookies

This Strawberry Shortbread Banana Bread is a really fun one to make and decorate and looks so impressive to serve to guests. Slice it thick and serve with tea or coffee or even a glass of pink prosecco would be so special!

If you are looking for more cake and banana bread bakes, how about my:

• Coffee Cookie Dough Cake
• Chocolate Honeycomb Banana Bread
• Vegan Snickers Banana Bread
• Cinnamon Roll Banana Bread
• White Chocolate Biscoff Banana Bread

I look forward to hearing what you think of this Strawberry Shortbread Banana Bread so please let me know in the comments below. If you do make this banana bread, I would love to see your creations, so please tag me – I am @nourishing.amy on Instagram and use the hashtag #nourishingamy. I’m also on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest  – please say hello!

With strawberry shortbread banana bread love x