Banana cake

This is the recipe for the banana birthday cake I baked for Strong_Bow79 and brought to Squished tubers and dead bird: An orphans' Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, by the time we sang 'Happy Birthday' and watched him try to blow out the trick re-lighting candles, everyone was too stuffed (no pun intended) to eat more than a sliver of cake. But, hey, that's ok, it'll be breakfast for my kids for the next week :-) since it's chock full of fruity delicious goodness (and monkeys love bananas...)

Banana Cake

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 ripe bananas
• 2 eggs, separated
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 cups sifted flour
• 2 tsp baking powder

Directions:

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy; add mashed banana and beat well. Add egg yolks singly. Add soda to sour cream. Sift flour with baking powder. Beat egg whites until stiff. Blend soda and sour cream mix into batter. Add flour slowly, then fold stiff egg whites in. Turn into greased pan, and bake for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees.

Makes, at best guess, a 9" round cake(?) - I don't know, I never make just one batch, it's always at least doubled..

My recommendation as far as icing is Buttercream Icing, but Banana Icing works well, too.

Here's another one, this time courtesy of Gary Rhodes - adapted from his book, New British Classics. This cake is very gooey and very moreish. It's also very easy to make.

This is a great way of using up over-ripe bananas that you'd rather not eat straight. Certainly, I do not reccomend trying this with green (or even youthfully yellow) bananas - you may be disappointed, and will be forever unenlightened as to the delight and addiction that this cake demands. Here goes.

Ingredients:

• 225g self-raising flour
• 100g softened butter
• 50g dark soft brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons golden syrup
• 4 eggs
• 4 bananas, mashed. But not too finely. Fingers will do.

Basically, mix it all together - cracking the eggs in a different bowl, then stirring it all in until it's quite (but not completely) smooth. There should still be some pea-sized chunks of banana in there.

Spoon it all into a 900g loaf tin (greaseproofed) and place in an oven at 180C (360F, Gas mark 4) for 50-55 min, or until a skewer stuck into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Remove and leave for 10min, then take it out of the tin. Leave to stand and cool, maybe for half an hour (it tastes better once it's set a bit).

You can add chopped walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts or hazelnuts (if you happen to like that sort of thing), and I've found that a little cinnamon powder works quite well.

Enjoy. That's an order.

Eggless Banana Cake

This cake is easily adapted to be a vegan recipe. But in my case, I had a few over ripe bananas, and no eggs. How embarrassment!
I have an evil tendency to experiment far too much in the kitchen. And I have to say, I figured bananas would lend themselves to a wonderfully moist cake with or without eggs. And this time I was right. This time it would work - and nobody had to get nailed to anything.
*phew*
Oh yeah, and it's a quick and simple recipe. I didn't ice it, just sprinkled some icing sugar on the top, serving it within an hour or so. If you wanna ice it - go ahead.

Ingredients

• 2 cup plain flour
• 1 Tbs baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 3 bananas, mashed
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup honey
• 1 Tbs poppy seeds, optional
• 1/2 cup milk (soy or cow or whatever)

Method

Sift the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and spices) together.
Mash the bananas. I did this with the honey, oil and vanilla. Then mix these with the dry ingredients. The mixture is more like a dough at this point.
Add enough milk to make a batter (which is runnier than a dough, but just runny enough to pour). Add the poppy seeds at this point, if desired.
Pour into a well greased cake tin, and bake at 180°C (350°F) for about 30 minutes, depending on your oven. You'll smell it when its just about finished cooking.