Can I Use Carob For The Chocolate Tahini Banana Bread?

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Tahini Banana Bread is a gluten-free loaf cake, where the flavour of chocolate is enhanced by the smoky tones of tahini. The banana bread has a double chocolate content by using both (unsweetened) cocoa powder and chocolate chips.

Carob powder comes from the seed pods of the carob tree. The seeds are dried and roasted and then ground into a powder that is sometimes used as a substitute for cocoa. You can certainly switch the chocolate chips in the recipe for carob chips. Carob powder can be used instead of cocoa powder and in the same quantities. However, carob is naturally sweeter than cocoa so some people suggest reducing the sugar in recipes where carob is used. The Chocolate Tahini Banana Bread is not particularly sweet, so we suspect that it may be fine just to use carob powder without any other adjustments. But if you did want to reduce the sugar slightly then we would suggest reducing the caster sugar by no more than 10-15g.