Banana Cake

Banana cake is a favourite for picnics as well as dressing up nicely with cream or frosting for a special occasion. The recipe can easily be doubled – one for now and one for the freezer; or for a really big group, a shared picnic or if I simply have loads of ripe bananas I make a triple quantity and bake it in a roasting pan. It makes a lot of cake, but it freezes well so never goes to waste.
Ingredients

- 110g butter
- 175g sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 medium sized ripe bananas mashed
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 30 ml boiling milk
- 225g self raising flour sifted
- ½ tsp baking powder

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Grease a 20cm loose bottom tin or 2 20cm sandwich tins

In a bowl or processer beat the butter and sugar until pale and creamy then add the eggs and beat well. Mix in the banana and add the baking soda dissolved in the boiling milk. Stir the foamy baking soda into the mixture and lastly add the flour and baking powder. I do the whole lot in the food processor which makes it very easy to sling together.

Place the batter into the prepared tins or tins and bake for 25-30 minutes or until risen, golden and springy. For sandwich tins bake for approximately 20 minutes.

Banana cake can be simply dusted with icing sugar or split and filled with cream and slices of banana, it also teams well with chocolate frosting or caramel or vanilla.
Tips

Ripe bananas are often cheaper to buy, and can be frozen for using in baking. The cell structure of the fruit changes making them very mushy when defrosted which is perfect for baking as they are super easy to mash or mix.