Banana Cakes

Sat 07 Feb 2009

As I've already mentioned, Friday was Eating Leeds' birthday which was, if nothing else, an excuse to make cake. Not that I ever really need an excuse.

I'd recently acquired a large number of bananas from work (don't ask - in this day and age a supplier thought it fit to tell our catering staff to 'throw out' the huge number of rock hard, bright green bananas they'd received ...). As far as I am concerned bananas are pretty much the devil's food. A banana is only good if in a cake, in a smoothie, or mushed up with plenty of cream and sugar. I had far too many bananas for cake alone, so it's a good thing Andy is happy to eat them.

Over at The Goddess's Kitchen, Maria had yet again worked some baking magic, but this time with a honey loaf. Bananas and honey is a good combination (well, when found in a smoothie) and even though the family banana cake recipe is bullet proof I figured there was no harm in a bit of tinkering.

So - preheat your oven to 180°C and, either prepare your 1lb loaf tin or sort out your cupcake pan.

Begin by beating together 125g of unsalted butter with 125mL of runny honey. Add 2 eggs and 300g of self raising flour. The mixture will be very stiff. Add 3 mashed (very) over ripe bananas. And finish with 1/4 cup (60mL) of milk with 1 tsp of bicarb of soda dissolved in it. I also added a splash of rum.

Bake for 30-45 minutes (loaf) or 15-30 minutes (cupcakes - depends on how large your cupcakes are!): cake should be golden and a skewer, as always, should come out cleanly.

The preferred way of finishing the cake is with chocolate icing and walnuts. However, because I had an apple to use up, I topped my cupcakes with a very thin slice of apple and a sprinkling of muscovado sugar just as they went in the oven.

Ready to go in the oven!

They're lovely, light tasty little cakes. In this recipe I've really cut back on the honey (the 'normal' recipe has 175g of sugar) so don't feel bad if you do want to slather them in icing!

Stumble It!