Recipe | Banana cake with buttercream icing and flaked almonds

Chewy, delicious banana cake. Go on, kid yourself it’s healthy! 🙂

Firstly, apologies that my photos for this recipe are rubbish. The artificial light when I made them was terrible. And the natural light the next day didn’t seem to improve matters!

This recipe is from my copy of Sweet and Savoury Bites by Jane Price.

Ingredients

125 g / 4.5 oz butter or margarine
115 g / 4 oz caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 ripe bananas, mashed (the riper the better, in fact rather overripe is best!)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
125 ml / 4 fl oz milk (I used full fat, but I don’t think it matters which type you use)
250 g / 9 oz self-raising flour, sifted
0.5 tsp ground mixed spice (it may also be sold as gingerbread spice mix

For the buttercream and final decoration:

I used flaked almonds to cover the finished cake. The original recipe suggests 15 g / 0.5 oz flaked toasted coconut. Each to their own!
125 g / 4.5 oz butter or margarine
90 g / 3.25 oz icing sugar
The original recipe also suggests adding a tablespoon of lemon juice to your buttercream. You can if you like. I didn’t.

Method

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C (160 fan) / 350 degrees F / Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a deep round 20 cm / 8 inch cake tin.

Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until the mixture is light and fluffy. If you have electric hand beaters or a mixer use your gadgets to save on elbow grease. Add the egg gradually to this mixture, beating after each addition. Add the vanilla and mashed banana and beat again until the mixture is thoroughly combined.

Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk. Use a metal spoon to gently fold the flour and mixed spice into the banana mixture, adding the milk gradually as you fold. Keep stirring gently until all the ingredients have combined and you have a smooth mixture (obviously you will have some banana lumps – that doesn’t matter). Pour your mixture into your tin and put it in the oven for an hour.

It will depend on your oven, but after half an hour I had to cover the top of my cake with tin foil to prevent the top becoming too brown. Keep an eye on your banana cake in case you need to do the same. After an hour, a knife inserted into the middle of the cake should come out clean and your banana cake is done.

Leave the cake in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

To make the icing, beat the butter and icing sugar (and lemon juice if you’re using it) until smooth. If your buttercream is too stiff to spread, add a little milk to loosen it. Spread it over the cooled banana cake using a knife (a palette knife ideally, if you have one) and then sprinkle almonds, coconut or whatever you fancy over the whole banana cake. Chocolate shavings would also be a nice idea 🙂

And here’s what it looked like under the glare of natural light the next day. Again, forgive the dreadful photography and just trust me what I say the banana cake slices well and tastes delicious!