Banana bread cake

A word of warning before we start: this cake should not have worked. By all rights and reason it should currently be lurking in a sullen and sunken mess at the bottom of the rubbish bag. And it would all be my fault for my systematic and ruthless bullying, abuse and then just plain forgetfulness.

I got this recipe of the webpage of the very marvellous Orangette, and so I trusted it enough not to mess around and just follow instructions for a change.

First, the bananas; I know that before you make banana bread, you should wait until the fruit is literally too ripe to eat, all disgusting and squishy within and black and bruised outside. But  my bananas were perfect eating consistency, that is to say probably a little green for a normal person, but perfect for anyone who, like me, squirms a bit at the slightly bit of bruise-y ooze. I had to puree them because they were pretty difficult to mash, and if I’d have wanted lumps in my cake, I’d have done it properly and gone out for chocolate chips.

Then, the scales were grubby looking, so against all my knowledge of cake making, I measured by guesswork and texture. Then I had no sour cream. Now, I know you can make your own with normal cream and lemon juice but in my unending wisdom, I decided just using a generous scoop of double cream (the only kind we have thanks to a greedy git for a boyfriend) and then squeezing lemon juice over the top right before baking would be fine.

Oh, and I overmixed. Horror of horrors, I even left the mixer on while I left to watch this particularly funny advert. And I combined it all wrong to start with, just everything in a big bowl in basically the order the recipe gave, then set the mixer from 'stun' to 'kill'.

To cap it all off, I opened the oven door not just once or twice, but three times during baking. Just to make things a little harder for my little cake.

But some things are obviously just meant to be, because this was pretty magnificent. A really moist, slightly chewy crumb, a hit of banana and a little sugar crunch on the top. This was so good that half of it was hovered up before I even thought about getting the camera out!

Finally, to ruin its street cred once and for all, I made the icing a pretty pale green. Partly for Hallowe’en  and partly because ever since I made a disaster bile green cheesecake a year ago, I’ve been waiting to prove novelty colours and baking can mix. Before you call me out on this, it didn't come out too well in the photos but this icing is GREEN. It really is. You'll just have to trust me.

But actually I wouldn’t bother with the icing next time, it was ok, but a little sweet, and a scoop of plain yoghurt (or cream for the naughty) is much nicer.The cake will definitely be a bit of an ugly duckling without its swathe of green frosting, but we all make sacrifices, don't we?

 

I think I have a new mission- to find a cake more forgiving of bad technique and shoddy recipe reading skills than this one. Watch this space.