banana cake

Banana Cake Recipe
By Elizabeth Martyn

Every family needs a great banana cake recipe, a delicious homemade cake that can be rustled up in no time at all, filling the house with that lovely banana aroma as it bakes.

This banana cake recipe is very simple, and is a great way to make use of those odd bananas that tend to languish in the fruit bowl. Once the skins go brown and spotty, they're just perfect for a recipe like this. Ripe bananas have much more flavor, and their soft texture means they blend into the cake mixture easily.

If you have a lot of ripe bananas you could make two banana cakes and freeze one. Another alternative is to freeze some of your ripe bananas. Just pop them, unpeeled, into a freezer bag and keep them frozen until needed. The skins will turn black, but that's simply a reaction to the cold temperature. Your bananas are still fine to use, and you can mash them straight from the freezer, or leave them to thaw first.

If you want to make a banana cake but your bananas aren't fully ripe, there's a cure - peel the bananas and put them in the microwave for a few seconds to soften them. Then use them in the banana cake recipe that follows:

Banana Cake Recipe

Ingredients

225g (8 oz, 2 cups) self-raising (self-rising) flour

100g (4 oz, 1/2 cup) soft margarine or softened butter

175g (6 oz, 3/4 cup) caster (superfine granulated) sugar

2 beaten eggs

3 bananas, peeled

175g (6 oz, 1 cup) dried fruit (use sultanas, raisins, currants, chopped glace cherries, candied peel or a mixture)

Makes a 2lb (900g) cake

Method

• Pre-heat the oven to gas 4/180C/350F. Oil and base line a 2lb (900g) loaf pan.
• Put all the ingredients except the dried fruit into a food processor and blend until well mixed.
• Take the food processor bowl from the base machine, remove the processing blade and stir the dried fruit into the mixture.
• Spoon the cake mix into the pan and bake for around 1 hr 20 minutes, or until a fine knife blade inserted into the cake comes out clean. Check the cake after 1 hr 10 minutes and if neccessary cover with a piece of foil to prevent the top from burning.
• Leave until cool, then turn out of the tin.
• This banana cake keeps well in an airtight tin for 2-3 days, or refrigerate it for up to 7 days.

For a banana nut cake, substitute chopped walnuts for some or all of the dried fruit, and scatter some over the top of the cake before baking.