Sunday, November 20, 2011

Banana Cake



While preparing Banana Cake, keep an eye on two things. Firstly, banana should be ripe. The ones sold in the market with yellow skin are tasty to eat as raw, but in order to prepare banana cake; you need to ripen the bananas till they turn brown in flesh. Just keep them in open for two days and they will mature to ripeness. The soft, moist texture and sweetness of brown bananas are crucial to the cake.

Secondly, don’t over mix the batter. As you add flour into the batter, just simple stirring couple of times till the ingredients blend in with each other and till no speck of flour remain in the mixing bowl is enough. Over mixing tautens the cake, making it rubbery. I learned it from my experience of baking a series of tough, cookie like cakes (:P)

The below recipe can be used for preparing muffins also. Just substitute the normal baking tin for cake with muffin tray. Simple!



Ingredients:
250 gms (about 2 cups) all-purpose flour (maida)

175 gm (about 1 cup) powdered white sugar

3 ripe bananas of large size (mashed)

1 1/2 tsp of baking powder

1 cup almonds or walnuts (roasted and shredded) (you can adjust the quantity as per your need)

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup (about 150 gm) unsalted butter (melted and of room temperature)

2 eggs (whipped)

Method:

1) Take two separate bowls. In one bowl combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon powder, sugar and nuts.

2) In another bowl, mix in mashed bananas, vanilla extract, melted butter and eggs. Whisk the mixture well to make a smooth batter. Then gently pour this wet mixture into the dry one, combine well till batter becomes thick. Please remember what I mentioned above, don’t over mix. Over mixing hampers perforation and resultantly, the cake would turn out tight and springy.

3) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degree F). Grease a baking tin with a spoonful of butter and pour the batter into it. Position the tray in the middle of the oven and bake for about 20-25 minutes till a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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