Cool bananas……

Apart from “Cool Bananas” being a kiwi slang meaning “Awesome”, there is yet another thing that is ‘awesome and renowned,’ and that is the good old Kiwi favourite – Banana Cake (aka) Banana Loaf / Bread.

Mind you I have tried the odd banana cake here and there which weren’t great from few local bakeries and some of them prepared by others which left me pitying their futile attempts at besting a traditional entity.

Finding a good tasting banana cake was just about forgotten when along came a banana cake in its most simple form, without icing or cream, in a good old lunch box. My colleague offered it to me which I sampled and it was love at first bite and I felt compelled enough to ask for the recipe so I could trial it. My colleague who in her offhand casual manner said … ‘Hmmm, it’s just the Edmonds recipe that almost everyone follows’. She said she just whipped it up last night because the bananas were going off and she didn’t want it to go to waste.

And wind to flashback, there I was imagining me making ‘hard to swallow’ and ‘Ugh’ faces of the number of times I had to force myself to finish over ripe bananas to just keep it from going to waste. But voila…here was a simple sensible idea to make use of the bananas before they become worm food. And I have it on good authority that the blacker the banana skin the better your cake’s going to turn out.

So here was my first day of leave in yonks, I pulled out my never-before-used Edmonds book and located the recipe for Banana Cake. I am not a huge fan of chocolate icing on the banana cake, but chose to do with this icing to indulge my chocolate loving (choc-crazy) Mother in law 😀

Ingredients:

 

For the cake – 

125 gms softened butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups mashed ripe bananas (3-4 bananas)

1 tsp baking soda

2 tbsp hot milk

2 cups plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

 

Method:

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Add mashed banana and mix thoroughly. Stir baking soda into hot milk and add to the banana mixture. Sift baking powder and flour into the mix and fold. Grease a 20 cm round cake tin or loaf tin and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 50 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Leave in tin for 10 minutes before turning it on to a wire rack. When cold, ice with Lemon or Chocolate icing or dust with icing sugar.

For the icing –

1 cup icing sugar

2 tbsp cocoa 

2 tsp softened butter

Few drops of Vanilla essence

1 tbsp boiling water

 

Method:

Sift icing sugar and cocoa in a bowl. Add soft butter and a few drops of vanilla essence. Pour in boiling water and beat well. Spread immediately and leave it to set.

If you looked at the above list and thought it was too much trouble, don’t be….it looks laborious but its anything but. Whip it all together and you have a star!

Okay, that’s me over and out, time to go bananas………!