“No matter what the recipe, any baker can do wonders in the kitchen with some good ingredients and an upbeat attitude.” –Buddy Valastro

All of us at home love banana cake, it’s a great way to make use of overripe bananas. It’s moist and delicious, the fresh flavour of banana in every bite and to top it all, it tastes better the next day. Banana cake served with cream cheese frosting makes a wonderful dessert. The same batter can be used to make muffins or cupcakes.

I make it a point to make banana cake whenever I see overripe bananas in the fruit basket . If you are short of time you can always freeze the bananas. All you have to do is to take out the bananas from the freezer and bring them to room temperature before you use it for baking. The amount of sugar can always be adjusted depending on the sweetness of the bananas. Every time I make banana cake I add something different, could be a little spice powder or cinnamon or a little caramel, chocolate chips. The choices are never ending- even a little cocoa added to the batter could surprise you.

This is a quick and versatile recipe, tried and tested umpteen times. Try it out and see for yourself. You really do not have to worry about the end result.

Ingredients:

• Salted Butter-1/2 cup (100grams)
• Flour- 2 cups
• Sugar-11/3 cups
• Eggs-2
• Sour milk- ( milk-1/4 cup added to 1 tsp of vinegar)
• Ripe Banana pulp-1 cup
• Nuts -1/2 cup
• V.essence-11/2 tsp
• Baking powder- 1tsp
• Baking soda – 1 tsp

Method:

• Cream butter and powdered sugar.
• Add eggs and beat well.
• Sift flour with baking powder and soda.
• Add v.essence.
• Add sifted flour and nuts alternately with sour milk.
• Add banana pulp and blend well.
• The consistency of the cake batter should be free flowing from a spoon.
• Pour the batter into a well greased and dusted cake tin.
• Bake in a preheated oven 180deg.c for 35-40 minutes.
• Let it cool in the tin for about 10 minutes.

Chefs tips:

• The bananas should be ripe if not overripe.
• Two medium sized bananas should give you 1 cup of banana pulp.
• If using unsalted butter, a pinch of salt could be added to the batter.
• Depending on the sweetness of the banana you can increase or decrease the sugar added.
• The cake batter is thick so do not be in a hurry to remove the cake from the tin . Let it cool completely.
• Can be served as a dessert along with some vanilla custard/ cream cheese frosting.
• This serves 6-8.

Till my next post,

Cheers,

Rose