Cooking Friday # 2 : Banana Cake

Inget Banana Cake gue yang resepnya hilang? Sampe sekarang gak ketemu. Emang ajaib banget deh tuh, gue gak inget sama sekali ambil dari mana.

Udah beberapa minggu ini, kami mencanangkan tiap hari Jumat adalah waktunya membuat podcast cooking/baking. Kami memang bukan profesional, gak mahir-mahir amat, kami cuman suka coba-coba, tapi kami berniat membagi pengalaman (syukur-syukur ada ilmu yang bisa didapat) yang kami punya kepada temen-temen yang mau tau resep-resep cooking dan baking yang pernah kami coba.

Kok hari Jumat, soalnya ini berhubungan dengan hari liburnya sang cameraman :P. Biasanya kalo udah menjelang Jumat, Papin udah mulai tanya-tanya, bikin apa kita besok Jumat :)). Akhirnya kita namain Cooking Friday.

Jumat kemaren, kebetulan punya pisang yang udah mateng banget, mo dimakan gitu aja juga udah males, pasti udah lembek banget. Akhirnya gue putusin untuk dibikin cake aja. Browsing sana sini nemu tiga kandidat resep dari Allrecipes, Recipezaar dan Nigella.

Akhirnya diputuskan pake resep Nigella dengan alesan klasik, paling simple dan pasti jadinya :P.

Enjoy the video! Silahkan didownload, semoga berguna :).



Banana Cake
from Nigella.com

Ingredients :
100 grams of butter or margerine
175 grams of sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
grated zest of 1 lemon
100 grams of raisins (optional)
1 tablespoon of Rhum (optional?!!???)
400 grams of (over)ripe bananas, mashed (about 4)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
150 grams roughly chopped nuts (optional)
300 grams flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons milk (optional)

Directions :
Cream butter and sugar together. Easiest is to use the stand-alone mixer, you don't need to bring the butter to room temp first then. Just let the machine churn and churn as you weigh off and prepare the rest of the ingredients. Best use eggs at room temp though.

Add the eggs, churn until the mixture changes in color and becomes light and fluffy.

Add the lemon zest, and if using raisins (or currants, or even cranberries), soak them in the rhum. I usually add a healthy glug of rhum and forget about the raisins alltogether. =)

Add the bananas and the lemon juice. Again, I usually don't measure out the juice but squeeze in roughly a tablespoon's worth, sometimes more.

Once the bananas are mixed in, you might notice the mix looks curdled. Don't worry. Add the nuts (if you want to use them).

Sift flour and baking powder together, or just loosely whisk them together in a bowl. Add to the egg-flour-banana mix and combine.

If the dough/batter seems too heavy, add milk. I usually don't need to because (boozer that I am!) I have already added a healthy dose of rhum!

This is for an oblong caketin about 30 cms long. Butter the tin, line it with parchment. Bake for 75 minutes in an oven preheated at 180 °C.

If making cupcakes, add 2 tablespoons of batter in each cupcake paper. I used the Lakeland ones, the box says 44x25 mm. The batter is enough for 20 cupcakes, plus 9 larger muffin cases (the ones you need for a 12-muffin size muffin tin).

Bake cupcakes for 20 minutes at 180°C, muffins for 25-30 minutes.

I don't like the greyish tinge a lot of banana cakes get. So I always use the darkest type of brown sugar I can get. I also substitute part of the weight of the flour with custard powder for that reason. The bright yellow color kind of masks the grey. You can substitute up to 30 % of the flour in any cake recipe with either corn flour or custard powder. This also helps make your cake lighter. Again, I go by the seat of my pants: Add corn flour/custard powder first, when your bowl is on the scales, and top up with flour.

This cake will keep for up to a week in the fridge, wrapped in tin foil. If it lasts that long... It yields a very moist cake, and the riper the bananas you use, the more fragrant the cake will be.

As you might have gathered, this is a very forgiving recipe. You can play around with the proportions quite a lot. Just make sure the sugar is well-dissolved before adding your other ingredients and use fresh baking powder.

If you don't have any bananas, use other fruit or fruit pulp. I have successfully made this cake with mashed apricots too, I've even topped up the weight of the mashed bananas with applesauce and the result was fine. My sister successfully used rhubarb compote and Mum once used blueberry compote. The result of that one looked a bit halloween-ish though. But it was delicious!

Sometimes I use all the ingredients. Sometimes I don't. I never leave out the lemon juice, though. But leaving out the zest and using chocolate chips instead of nuts is a pretty yummy idea, even though I say so myself.

Hot tip: If you want the tear in the cake to be nice and straight, wet your finger and draw a straight line across the top of the (raw) batter, lengthwise, before putting it in the oven. Or have a knife at the ready, and as soon as you see your cake starting to rise, cut the top with the knife (lengthwise). The tear will follow that line.

If the top of the (large) cake browns too much, cover with tin foil to protect it and prevent more browning.