The other day I made this delicious banana cake (if I do say so myself) as I had loads of bananas that needed eating up and had gone a bit soft. I really like using up random ingredients (I know bananas aren’t that random, but I had about 10 of them!) and it makes me feel pretty smug when I know I haven’t thrown away food AND I’ve made something yummy.
So cue Jamie Oliver’s Banana Cake (link here, his photos are helpful). Ingredients and method are listed below, although I didn’t use this icing recipe but I’m sure it’s delicious. I made maple syrup icing as I had, you guessed it, maple syrup to use up (link to the icing recipe here), method below. I actually added a bit of white chocolate to it and it was so damn good!
Enjoy!
Jamie Oliver’s Banana Cake
Ingredients
- 150g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing the tin(s)
- 225g plain flour
- 1 tablespoon of baking powder
- 3 ripe bananas (around 250g peeled weight)
- 150g soft light brown sugar
- 2 large free-range eggs
- 60ml natural yoghurt (I didn’t use any yoghurt and it tasted great)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Icing option 1
- 100g unsalted butter, softened
- 175g icing sugar
- 60g cream cheese, chilled
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
- Optional: one banana for decorating
Icing option 2 – maple syrup icing
- 8 oz / 227g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 3/4 cup / approx 150g icing sugar
- 1 cup maple syrup (I used about half a cup as that’s what I had left so I think you can be flexible, but like I said I added white chocolate which gave an added sweetness)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Method
- Preheat the oven to 170 degrees / gas 3. Grease and line a 20cm round, deep cake tin (I used two shallow cake tins).
- Melt the butter over a low heat.
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt. Peel and mash the bananas in a separate bowl with the back of a fork; then whisk in the melted butter, sugar, eggs, yoghurt and vanilla extract.
- Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and whisk until just combined.
- Spoon the mixture into the cake tin(s) and bake for 40-50 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Leave the cake to cool in its tin(s) for 10 minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack (or similar) to cool completely.
- While the cake is cooling, make the icing (this is for option 1, the method for option 2 is below). Using an electric mixer, beat the butter, sugar and cinnamon until pale and fluffy.
- Add the cream cheese and beat until just combined.
- Spread onto the top of the cooled cake and, if like me you had two cake layers, you can put some icing in between them too. Top with slices of banana before serving, if you like.
Icing option 2 method:
- Combine all ingredients in the bowl and with an electric mixer beat on low speed until the maple syrup and sugar are incorporated, for about 1 minute.
- Increase the speed to high and beat until the mixture is light and whipped, for about 5 minutes. Use immediately to ice the cake.
Beauty Urges 