APPLE AND BANANA CAKE

 





 

Some time ago I was looking at some rather tired apples and bananas in the fruit bowl and wondered what I could make with them.  I am still searching for the “perfect” apple cake recipe and I love banana cakes so I wondered if I could combine the two.  I looked up “apple and banana cake” on the old laptop and up popped a really good recipe in a blog called “feeding boys” dating back to 2010.  The author tells us that it’s adapted from a recipe in a book by Tana Ramsay called “Family Kitchen” and you can see it here.

The recipe is for a loaf cake but I wanted to make a round one.  I have found that an 8” (20cm) round tin usually works perfectly well for all 2lb (900g) loaf tin recipes so that’s what I used.

 

I also decided to add the zest of a small orange to the mixture and some slices of apple on the top, just for the fun of it.

 

It was delicious!  It had a nice, moist, even crumb that cut well without crumbling too much.  The flavour was lovely and it kept well in an airtight tin.
In fact it was so good that I have since made several variations of the recipe:

Apple, banana and blueberry cake, made by adding a handful of blueberries to the basic cake mixture.

Pear and banana cake made by substituting chopped pears for the grated apple – only because the pears were too ripe and juicy to grate.

I made this one using the all-in-one, beat it all together, method, which may account for why it turned out a bit more rustic looking.  It was still delicious though!

I love versatile recipes like this one.  There aren’t many cakes that I make more than once or twice but this is a simple recipe that always seems to turn out well and be endlessly adaptable.  In fact I tend to think of it as my “fruit bowl cake” as it seems to work using whatever fruit is in need of eating up.

Mind you, I have yet to make it as the banana and apple loaf cake in the original recipe.  Soon, possibly!

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

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground cinnamon

pinch of salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and line a 900g / 2lb loaf tin or 20cm round springform 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.

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I have decided to have one more try at publishing in Blogger, copying my draft text saved in Live Writer, adding it to a post bit by bit and adding the photos all over again.  They seem to load quicker if I resize each one for a web page.  I don't find the finished result as pleasing as being able to publish directly from Live Writer, but it's possibly better than the alternatives - give up altogether or try to get to grips with some completely new way of doing a blog.