Emergency Banana Cake

Our lovely church playgroup has been the joyful participant in the FareShare scheme and a local Tesco Express branch donates pastries and breads most weeks which Papa goes to collect and we share with playgroup and church members, with any left over being taken to a local homeless shelter - so there really is no waste!

However, the Tesco we receive donations from has apparently had a broken freezer for a few weeks, and the repair is not likely to be swift.  So when I received the text to inform me that there was no donation this week, I decided to use some black bananas to whizz up a cake for playgroup instead.

I used to bake every Thursday once upon a time, when our playgroup was a small circle of parents and carers, but since beginning online advertising, we've had far higher numbers and I just can't cope with the volume each week!

But just this once, I wanted to.  Besides, those bananas were going to go to waste otherwise!

So I looked for a quick and easy recipe online using the right amount of banana, and then of course I slightly tweaked what I found because it was too high in sugar for my preferences.

Here is what I did, I'm afraid I mix and matched the measurements because the original recipe was a "cups" recipe, and while I like that for liquids and powders, I don't like it for things like butter.  Just try it, you won't be sorry.   At least 7 people asked me for the recipe...

Emergency Banana Cake

4 oz butter 

3/4 cup sugar. I used a mix of dark brown soft and golden caster sugars

2 eggs

4-5 mashed bananas

2 cups of plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 Preheat the oven to 180˚, and line a 2lb loaf tin with greaseproof paper.  I also used 3 silicone muffin cups as all the mixture didn't fit in the loaf tin.

2 Cream the butter and sugars together until smooth.  Beat in the eggs, then the bananas.  Add the flour and bicarb, and just stir gently until just combined.  Do not over mix.

If you are doing the creaming and egg mixing in a machine, stop and use a spatula to fold the flour and bicarb in by hand.

3 Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 30 mins.  Remove the smaller cups and turn the loaf around.  Cook for another 15 mins and you should find that a toothpick comes out clean by then.  Turn out and cool.  Slice and share and eat.  Sit back and accept the adulation for very little effort.

HINTS AND TIPS:  The recipe suggests using a 9" x 5" pan. I didn't have anything in even a vaguely similar size so I improvised. It suggested using one whole cup of sugar.  I reduced this to three quarters, and would actually happily reduce the sugar further than I did already.  It also suggested cooking for 1 hour, but I felt my cake was done perfectly, but I do have a new fan oven.

Using up biscuit type cereal and using up bananas too

Well, it has been a while, because I or Godpapa have been doing almost all the cooking from Slimming World recipes, and so far, since March I have managed to lose 11.5 lbs, and so I'm extremely happy, and hardly ever hungry. I'm not going to explain the SW ethos or method, it is easy enough to sign up online or join your local club!

However, I do crave a little something sweet from time to time, and obviously home made is far better as you know what's gone into it, and I've even been known to sit and CALCULATE the Syn value of every ingredient in a cake, add them up, then divide that by how ever many portions we've served and usually it's a perfectly decent number. On the SW plan you are encouraged to have between 5 and 15 Syns a day, and that makes it much easier to not feel deprived!

Anyway,  thanks to my Dad, we recently discovered a super new gluten free biscuit cereal  - Nutribrex -  and I really enjoy it, however, it isn't on the list of "allowed" breakfasts, tho each biscuit is only 3 Syns, so I sometimes have one as an included treat snack just before bed-time.

Today I had some bananas which everyone was refusing to eat, and I stumbled upon this lovely recipe from the Australian blog The Organised Housewife, so it seemed like a super plan.

I suddenly remembered that Australian cup measurements and tablespoons are different from American and UK ones, (US cups are based on the imperial 8oz cup volume, and the Aussie cup is based on the metric 250ml volume.) If you want exact conversions, feel free to google it and weigh the flour out, but I just used my American cups and heaped them a little!

Now, the beauty of this recipe is that it can be converted so many ways!

Using the Nutribrex, and if you use Doves Farm (or any other) gluten free flour, you can make this a gluten free treat very easily. Using Pure and a non-dairy milk you can make this dairy free. Using actual Weetabix (or shops own variation) and sweetener, and low fat spread, you can easily make this a very low Syn treat (if  using the biscuit cereal as your HEb) Anyway, however you make it, MAKE IT, it is easy, delicious and fun for the kids to help with too.

You will need:

3 bananas (over ripe and mushy is perfect) mashed up

4 Weetabix style biscuit cereal bix.

3/4 -1 cup of milk

80g butter/margarine/low fat spread

2 eggs

1.5 cups self-raising flour

2 tbs brown sugar

a handful of choc chips (obviously we used white choc, the original recipe calls for milk choc)

I would have added cinnamon but Big'Un says she no longer likes cinnamon. I'm glad I didn't tho.

Heat up the oven to 180-200 degrees. You know your oven.

Line a 12 hole muffin tin with muffin papers.

Get the kids to crush up the cereal biscuits in a medium sized bowl. They will LOVE this. Or do it yourself and get some anxiety out!

Add the bananas, and then the milk. Mix well and leave to stand for 10 minutes.

In a LARGE bowl, beat together the butter/marg with the eggs. Don't worry if this is a weird texture like you sometimes see in the clouds on summer evenings, it will work.

Add the banana mixture, and fold it through. Add the flour, sugar and then the choc chips and mix until just combined, and spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin cups.

Bake until golden and a skewer comes out clean, about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the muffins. We found it actually made 12 cakes, we never get the amount stated in the recipe, but this was SPOT on.

Really tasty, and a lovely texture.  And I wouldn't have a problem serving them for brekkie really either!

Banana Oaty Buttermilk Muffins

I had a couple of bananas going black as usual, as it has been half term and so Tiny isn't having them routinely in the morning before the dog walk.  I also had a litre of Polish buttermilk in the fridge, which I love to buy as it is only £1 and lasts well and is great for waffles, scones, American "biscuits", lassi, and muffins.  Since we were doing a half term playgroup, I decided to throw together a nice healthy and filling muffin recipe to help blood sugar levels stay, well, um, level... So I found a recipe online, and tweaked it to fit my wishes and had these ready in no time! In fact, because I made mini muffins, the thing that took the longest was the spooning of a teaspoon of mixture at a time into tiny muffin tins, the making of the batter took no more than 10 minutes, including finding and measuring all the ingredients.

1 cup plain flour

1 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 cup caster sugar (I used a bit less and it was fine)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarb of soda

1/3 cup normal porridge oats (we use Flahavans Organic, but bog standard Basics etc would be absolutely fine.)

2 tbs oat bran (optional)

The above are the dry ingredients.

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup well mashed banana. (I had 2 medium bananas, and I also mushed up a peeled pear which was likely to be ignored as it was bruised, but was perfect for smoothie-fying or similar)

2 tbs veg oil

1 egg

These are the wet ingredients.

First, heat the oven to 190 degrees C. Prepare the muffin tin/silicon either with a cooking spray or with muffin papers.

Stir  all the dry ingredients into a large bowl.

In a separate jug or bowl, whisk the wet ingredients well together.

Pour the wet over the dry, and stir quickly just until the mix is blended.  Do not overmix, do not beat or cream or whip like you would a cake mix; be gentle, and be very lax.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cups, about 3/4 full.  With mini muffins this can be slow, about a teaspoon at a time, and you will need 2 trays.

Bake 10-15 mins for mini muffins and 15-20 for normal muffins, until a cocktail stick comes out clean when stabbed into the centre.

Cool in tins for 15 mins, then remove and cool completely on a rack.

Needless to say these are best within 24 hours.