Almost a whole month has gone by since my last post - how did that happen? There has been some baking chez nous, but not as much as usual.
This cake was baked in a kind of desperation a few weeks ago, when our remodelling of the upstairs was nearly at an end but there was still a shed load of decorating, tidying and other stuff to do. When I feel that life is all work and no play it's baking a cake that cheers me up.
Nick's favourite cake is a ginger cake. However, there were two very ripe bananas in the fruit bowl and I decided to not waste them by adapting a well used recipe and putting enough ginger in it to hopefully disguise the banana. Well almost!
I was also chomping at the bit to use a new acquisition - a cake tin brought from the UK to France earlier in the year and as yet unused. I had spotted it in Wilko where it is actually sold as a "small roasting tin". It was not expensive and it occurred to me that it might come in handy for loaf tin recipes. I'm not always thrilled with loaf cakes, or at least not the shape of them. They can sometimes turn out quite tall and a slice of cake can be a bit unwieldy, so this seemed to me that it would produce something more like an oblong cake than a loaf. I was right. The other good thing about it is that standard loaf tin liners also fit it, which is very handy.
I was very pleased with the cake too. This is a slight variation on a recipe for apple and banana cake which you can see here. I love recipes that can be adapted to fit the occasion but always turn out well. I have made versions of it many times and it never fails to work. The cake was moist, bananary and gingery - what's not to love?
Ingredients
150g light muscovado sugar
85g softened butter or spreadable butter
2 large eggs, beaten
4 medium ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
1 dessert apple, unpeeled and grated
250g self raising flour
4 tsp ground ginger
pinch of salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan / gas mk 4. Grease and line a 900g / 2lb loaf tin, 20cm round springform tin or small roasting tin
.
Cream the butter and sugar and gradually beat in the eggs.
Sift in the flour and spices, add the banana, salt and apple and mix well together.
Transfer to the prepared tin and bake for about an hour. Check after 45 minutes and cover loosely with foil if the top is browning too much.
When done, remove from the oven and cool in the tin for 20 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling and dust with icing sugar before serving.
Cuts into 8-10 slices.
This is a very useful recipe, especially for those 'too many banana' moments (and I often seem to have those). I love banana cakes but I must admit that a ginger cake rarely goes amiss too. I'm impressed that you found your tin in Wilko. I always seem to get confused in that shop. The last branch that I visited seemed to have a bedding and paint section next to a lighting and cookery section.
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