Simple Banana Cake

I find it hard to properly regulate my banana buying at the moment. I buy a few and suddenly I can't get enough of them. I then buy a big bunch and the thought of eating them makes me feel positively sick. Illness can do funny things to your appetite.

Typically, once bananas start getting long in the tooth I throw them into the freezer with the promise that I will do something with them soon. This is all very well, but as usual, I do not quite get around to it and so their population builds at a rabbit like rate.



Last week I realised that I had frozen bananas in plague proportions. The freezer was so fed up with the situation that it had taken to hurling them at my toes every time I was silly enough to open the door.



What else was there to do but to make a banana cake. I have only ever used one recipe for banana cake - Simple Banana Cake in Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion. It's such a good recipe I have never had to look elsewhere.

It's hard to beat banana cake. Not only is it delicious there's also that illusion of healthiness - after all it's full of fruit which is full of fibre and vitamins and all that. I choose to believe.

Simple Banana Cake

(adapted from Cook's Companion)

125gm unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
few drops vanilla
250gm plain flour
1 tspn bicarbonate soda
1/2 tspn salt
1/2 tspn cinnamon
1/8 tspn ground allspice
1/2 cup buttermilk or 1/2 cup milk with 1 tspn lemon juice

Butter and flour a 20cm square cake tin, then line the base with baking paper.

Cream butter and sugar and then beat in eggs, banana and vanilla. Sift the dry ingredients and add to the mixture, alternating with the milk or buttermilk.

Spoon into tin and bake in a 180C oven for 45 minutes to an hour or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for a few minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack.