16.1.15

CAKE: BANANA COCONUT AND SULTANA LOAF CAKE



I'm sorry its been a bit quiet around here of late...the sunshine over the past few weeks has been keeping us busy with long lazy mornings at the pool and bike rides around the neighbourhood (ie: I carry a bike around the block while someone plays hide and seek behind every tree). But then this week dear Melbourne, you live up to your five seasons in one day reputation and we're back in rain coats and gumboots splashing in puddles and getting soggy socks. So with a bunch of over ripe bananas sitting in the fruit bowl it made perfect sense to get cracking on baking some banana bread.
My usual banana bread recipe is from Nigella Lawson's 'How To Be A Domestic Goddess' a cookbook that has been used many many times, nearly every page has been dog-eared and the back of the book is stuffed with my grubby cooking notes. But I had just recently borrowed from the local library 'Delia's Cakes' by Delia Smith so I though 'd give her recipe a go.
Delia uses a decent amount of both orange and lemon zest in her banana bread recipe which is a great addition and one I shall keep using. She also uses lard as well as butter, although she notes that you can use all butter- which I did of course! I went a bit 'Nigella' on the instructions and used a food processor instead of rubbing the fat(s) with my fingers into the flour mixture. I substituted walnuts for coconut because I was sans nuts and I added sultanas as my child has a dried fruit addiction going on. I would definitely use walnuts next time bu I really like the addition of the coconut so perhaps if you have both you could add a handful of nuts along with the sultanas or replace the sultanas for nuts. Oh and I reduced the sugar too...so basically its my own recipe now I guess. But this book has been a great baking book, we mad the ginger snaps which lasted one day (I ate four with one cup of tea- oink!) and I am going to try her welsh cake recipe tomorrow - they have sultanas in them so I'm pretty sure they'll be a hit!
I'll be busy baking all weekend in preparation for a wedding cake I have to create for two very special peeps who are getting hitched Australia Day weekend. I'M SO EXCITED about baking this wedding cake and I will post all about it here so keep your eyes peeled! I am also going to start a new post series called CAKE BAKING 101. So if you are keen on learning how to bake a cake for someone special or heck even yourself! then you can subscribe to these posts here. I will cover everything from baking a simple butter cake to O.T.T layered cakes. Its gonna be hella fun AND I'll even do a Christmas Cake at the end of the year...woop woop! In the meantime get your food processor out a moosh up some bananas as this cake is pretty delish. Oh and the sun is back out shining up a treat- woohoo!


BANANA CAKE

recipe adapted from Delia's Cakes

225 grams plain flour
2 level teaspoons baking powder
80 grams butter, at room temperature
1 large egg, beaten
80 grams caster sugar
4 medium bananas, peeled and roughly mashed
50 grams of shredded coconut 
zest of 1 orange
zest of 1 lemon

1 large handful of sultanas

Pre heat oven to 180 deg.
In a food processor add flour and baking powder and shjooz to combined. 
Add butter, egg and sugar then pulse a few times until you have a sandy like mixture.
Scrape in the mashed banana, coconut, zests and shjooz to just combined.
You can then either stir of pulse in the sultanas.
Pour the cake mixture into a buttered and lined loaf tin and bake for approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes (mine was done at the hour mark).

Leave the cake in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire cooling rack.

Serve thick warm slices of this cake with a good lashing of butter or to be indulgent you could frost it with a cream cheese or orange cinnamon icing. Yum.











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