What to eat Wednesdays - Banana cake

One of my readers wrote in asking for advice on what to make with some overripe bananas. I gave him the link to last week's banana bread recipe and also promised to post a banana cake recipe this week.

If the bananas in your fruit bowl are looking past their best, you can store them in the freezer (as long as their skins are intact) ready to pull out when you have enough to bake with. All my banana baking recently has been done with old frozen bananas.

I haven't bought many bananas lately, what with so much other fruit coming my way, but I did buy some Fair Trade bananas from my local Pak'N'Save a few weeks ago. I haven't seen them since, and am desperately hoping the store brings them back. Ever since reading Animal Vegetable Miracle I haven't felt totally right about eating bananas because they have to travel so far to get to us. It will ease my conscious a little if I know the people growing them are getting a good wage.

I digress.

I got this moist banana cake recipe from The Best of Annabel Langbein. As long as you've got two cups of fruit, you can change the recipe up a bit - replacing the bananas with feijoas, doing a banana and strawberry combination or whatever else takes your fancy. (The photo above shows a banana and strawberry combination.)

Ingredients

• 250g butter, softened
• 1 1/2c sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2t vanilla essence
• 4 ripe bananas, peeled and mashed (about 2 cups)
• 2t baking soda
• 1/2c hot milk
• 2t baking powder
• 3c flour, sifted

Method
1. Preheat oven to 170°C. 


2. Line a 25cm cake tin with baking paper.

3. Beat butter and sugar until creamy.

4. Beat in the eggs and vanilla then the bananas.

5. Dissolve baking soda in hot milk and add to mixture.

6. Fold in combined baking powder and flour.

7. Spoon into prepared tin and smooth top.

8. Bake 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean and the top is springy to the touch.

9. Cool in tin before turning out.


Makes 1 large cake (about 10-12 servings). Sprinkle with icing sugar or ice with with lemon or chocolate icing.

Lemon icing
Mix together 3 1/2c icing sugar, 50g melted butter, 3T boiling water and 1T lemon juice to form a smooth paste.

Chocolate icing
Mix together 3c icing sugar, 1/4c cocoa, 50g melted butter and 3T boiling water to form a smooth paste.

Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time: 1 hour.