Making Things Work...

You may remember the banana bread/cake recipe given (from the Quaker Oats booklet). Decided to make it after all (I know I said I would, but then you know how often I change my mind!).
This turned out to be very economical in that it did make use of the over-ripe bananas that I had kept in the fridge - the flesh had turned a murky brown colour, but on sampling a slice, found it still edible and exceptionally sweet (the riper the banana the sweeter it gets).

Here you see the ingredients .
Moving clockwise from the
top is a bowl of flour, then a
tiny amount of milk in a very
large jug, a jug with some
golden syrup, an egg, marg
sitting on the sugar, then the
ripe bananas, a tub of bicarb
and jar of mixed spice.


The margarine used was Stork,
and the only difference to the
recipe given yesterday was
that I used two tsp. of mixed
spice instead of one (as that
was all that was left in the jar)
and it was ancient anyway so
had probably lost its strength.
Here you see the finished cake.


Once cut, the texture was cake,
certainly not 'bread', and this
ate well either alone or spread
with butter.
Both B and I loved it, this is why
only half of it was left before I
managed to get a chance to take
a photo.


Here's a good tip: when wishing to butter fresh bread or slices of crumbly cake, always spread with butter BEFORE slicing, and the bread/cake is then far less likely to fall apart when cutting thin slices.

Not sure whether the cake was dark in colour because of the syrup, the extra spice, or the bananas having darker flesh, but had no problem with this. Again, this is another recipe that can be adapted, as it had the taste of a fruit cake without the fruit, so dried fruit could be folded into the batter before baking. Or maybe ground ginger used instead of mixed spice, and if black treacle is used instead of golden syrup this would darken the cake more and turn it into a very credible 'gingerbread'.
Wrapped in foil and kept for a couple of days before eating, because of the syrup, the cake may become 'stickier', and so even more scrumptious.

Considering the amount of bananas used, there was not that much banana flavour in the cake, but these did seem to work as a substitute for eggs as the cake was far lighter in texture than expected. After sampling the first slice, Beloved said it was lovely - "with a hint of ice-cream flavour". Not quite sure what he meant by that, but as he loves ice-cream doubt that was meant to be a criticism.
All I can say is - we need never throw over-ripe bananas away when there is a recipe as easy to make and so very economical as this Banana Cake.

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