aquaprofunda | Recipe: Banana Cake

Another re-post from doublejoint. Keeping the commentary this time :)

Dear

I hear you have some overripe bananas, so I'm sharing my banana cake recipe. It hales from my childhood--I think I had some at my friend's house (age 5? 6?), and Mum made sure to get the recipe, and it's been made hundreds of times since.

I made another one of my own last night, after finally purchasing a thermometer for my increasingly decrepit oven. The first time I tried to use the oven after I moved into this house, the temperature knob came off in my hand; another time when I opened the door the glass panel on the front fell right off (it's since been repaired).

At one point a few months ago I tried to cook a honey and spice cake, but within about 15 minutes of being in there the top had started to burn while the bottom remained liquid; by the time it was no longer raw I had to saw 2 inches of charcoal off the top of it.

So, upon installing the oven thermometer, I discovered that ~160°C on the thermometer = ~120° on the dial. Thus I was able to set it accordingly, and lo and behold, my banana cake turned out awesome. I forsee more baking in my future.

At any rate, here's the banana cake recipe. Measurements are Australian (I believe there's a slight difference in US/Aus cup & spoon sizes, I'm not sure how we compare to European measurements).

The cake itself is rather 'mild' for a cake, I suppose--leaning towards banana bread, but I think a bit too soft and sweet for that. But not too sweet for my tastes! It doesn't need to be iced--the browned top sort of caramelises deliciously, it really is just perfect as it is. But don't make the same mistake I did and take it out of the pan too soon--I ended up peeling the top and the bottom of the cake off because I didn't let it cool for long enough. (On plus side, it meant I got to eat all those delicious scrapings aaall at once.)

Banana Cake

Ingredients

2-3 bananas

125g butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 tbsp milk

1 & 1/2 cups self-raising flour

Powdered cinnamon, or any other spice you fancy--this time I also put in a wee pinch of nutmeg, and a small spoon of minced ginger

Round or square cake baking tin (NOT a loaf one!)

Instructions

Over-ripen 2-3 bananas. As in, as close to completely black as you have the patience for. If I end up with over-ripe bananas before I'm ready to make a cake, I freeze them. Defrost before using.

Beat together:
125g butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs

Mix in:
The 2 or 3 mashed overripe bananas

Add:
2tbsp milk
1&1/2 cups SR Flour
good pinch cinnamon (and/or spices of choice)

Cook for 30-45 mins in moderate oven (150-170 celcius) or til springs back then test with skewer. I find the colour is a good indicator; it should be golden brown (see pic).

Let stand for a couple of minutes, turn out & cool on wire rack.

So, now I know the oven is working, I have plans for all the things I'm going to bake! I've been using Evernote to clip recipes I want to try so I can read them from the iPad when I'm in the kitchen; the only problem is that I can't adjust the text size on the fly in Evernote on the iPad (which seems a huge gap in functionality--I just want to zoom a bit! Note to self: submit feature request).

Here are a few of the ones on my to-bake list:

Pumpkin butterscotch cookies

Lemon sugar cookies

Pear and ginger muffins

Assam chai-der cake

Also, as I've become a bit more cluey about cooking in the past year or two, it's occurred to me that this banana cake recipe is pretty standard; I could fairly easily substitute some ingredients for others and experiement--e.g. zucchini and chocolate cake, pear and honey cake, etc etc, om nom nom.

Baking ahoy!