Melt and mix banana bread

Is Spring coming? I walk past this tree every day on my way to/from work and noticed last week that it has started to produce flowers. There's only flowers on this one so far - the trees next to it are still bare. I sure hope Spring is coming!



Bro and I spent some time in the kitchen in the weekend. Bro made soup and sour cream dumplings while I did some baking. I neglected to photo Bro's creations - sorry!

I felt like making some banana bread - merely so I could use a new tin! I recently got a mini loaf tin to add to my burgeoning tin collection. In my defence, some tins were presents - at least, that's what I say to ease the part of me that longs for an uncluttered life!



I googled for a banana bread recipe, and came across one by Bill Granger for a melt and mix banana bread (there's also a coconut bread on that page that I'm keen to try soon). I was pretty faithful to the recipe - the only variation I made was to reduce the sugar to 3/4 cup. I was worried that it would be too sweet, but to be honest, the full cup of sugar would probably have been okay.



I found that the banana breads rose A LOT and my mini loaves weren't so mini by the time they had finished baking! The breads were also very moist and the crunchy almond topping on top was super scrumptious. I ate all the topping that had fallen off the breads and found myself picking extra bits off!

It was a pretty good recipe, but if you have bananas lying around, I'd recommend this banana cake before it. Banana bread is pretty much cake anyway, right?

Banana Cake

Bananas are breeding in my freezer.

Looking inside my freezer recently, I realised I had almost a dozen ripe, blackened bananas in there. The problem is, I don't like eating bananas once they have passed that perfect yellow stage. So they get stashed in the freezer.

After I realized that bananas were taking over, I had to make something with them. After a pot roast one Saturday night, I made this banana butterscotch pudding for dessert. I read through the recipe quickly and had in my head that it was a self saucing pudding. After pouring the liquid topping over the batter, I suddenly had second thoughts. Had I read the recipe correctly? Was it a self saucing pudding? Or was it a cake with syrup poured over to serve? Uh oh. I had already closed my laptop at that stage (and I had poured the liquid over already!) so I threw it in the oven and hoped that my memory wasn't failing me.

Fortunately, the ole memory held up and it was a self saucing pudding. Unfortunately, it was so so sweet that we couldn't eat much of it. It would've been good if we had cream or ice cream to cut through the sweetness, but we didn't have anything of that sort in the house. It was a bit of a shame - if it hadn't been so sickly sweet it would've been really good!



My stash of frozen bananas also yielded two banana cakes. The first one I made for us, and we (mostly I) enjoyed it for morning tea over a few days. The second one I took into work. We constantly have morning tea at work – any excuse will do – staff leaving, staff starting, staff getting engaged, staff having babies, staff having a birthday, and even staff going on leave (seriously!). So my colleague and I decided that we would bring in cake one day – just because. Our pod got a lot of visitors when people slowly realised that there was cake on offer!



The recipe that I used is from Donna Hay's Modern Classics 2. It's probably the cookbook I've used the most. Not all the recipes in there are good – in fact, I have made a couple that are absolute duds – but the banana cake recipe is brilliant. The cake is soft and moist, with a pleasant banana flavour and a hint of cinnamon. I always reduce the total amount of sugar to 1 cup, but have left the recipe below as is.



Banana Cake

From Donna Hay's Modern Classics 2

Serves 8-10

125g (4 oz) butter, softened
1 cup caster (superfine) sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup sor cream
1 cup roughly mashed banana (about 3 medium bananas)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Place the butter, caster sugar and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. Gradually add the eggs and beat well. Sift the flour and baking powder over the mixture. Add the cinnamon, sour cream and banana and stir to combine. Spoon the mixture into a greased 26cm (10 in) fluted ring tin. Bake for 40 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Banoffee Pie

The last time that I had banoffee pie was in Wellington. Alastair and I had one way tickets to the other side of the world, and didn't know when we would be back. Just before we left, Alastair, Pat and I went out to a restaurant and ate ourselves silly. We were greedy little piglets and ordered dessert too, which was banoffee pie. Even though we were stuffed, we ate every last crumb and enjoyed it immensely. A few days later, Alastair and I got on a plane, and we didn't see my Bro again for a year.

Four and a half years have gone by since that banoffee pie and life has changed a lot. Alastair and I travelled, moved countries, settled down, got married and imported my brother into Australia. Life may have changed but we still talk about that night in Welly and reminisce about that pie.

Banoffee pie was apparently invented in 1972 by the Hungry Monk restaurant in East Sussex, UK. It's a dessert with a pastry base, covered with layers of dulce de leche, bananas and cream. Once you've prepared the base and the dulce de leche, assembling the pie is very easy.

I've been wanting to make a banoffee pie for ages, but with the high banana prices over the past couple of years it never happened. Until the other weekend where I found an occasion for it - an Out of Africa barbeque! (Basically catching up with friends after our return.) The shortcrust pastry recipe came from Donna Hay's Modern Classics 2 and is extremely easy and has never failed on me yet. I love making desserts using shortcrust pastry because people are always impressed - and yet it's the easiest thing in the world. The rest of the recipe I took from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Kitchen. I cheated on the dulce de leche due to lack of time (and fear of exploding cans) and bought ready made caramel topping from the supermarket. The canned caramel topping was acceptable, but I have no doubt that boiling my own cans would've been better.

By the way, do try the almonds in Jamie's recipe. They were wonderful on top of the pie, giving a bit of crunch.

Sweet Shortcrust pastry
From Donna Hay Modern Classics 2

2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
3 tablespoons caster (superfine) sugar
150g (5 oz) cold butter, chopped
2-3 tablespoons iced water

Process the flour, sugar and butter in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. While the mother is running, add enough iced water to form a smooth dough and process until just combined. Knead the dough lightly, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface or between sheets of non-stick baking paper until 2-3mm (1/8 in) thick, or whatever thickness is required, and line the tart tin. (This recipe makes about 350g (12 oz) pastry, which is sufficient to line up to a 26cm (10 in) pie dish or tart tin.)


Preheat the oven to 180 degree C (350 degree F). Place a piece of non-stick baking paper over the pastry and fill with baking weights or uncooked rice or beans. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the weights and bake for a further 10 minutes or until the pastry is golden.

Banoffee Pie
From Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Kitchen

200g/7oz blanched, whole almonds
280g/10oz icing sugar
2 x 397g/14oz tins of condensed milk, boiled
6 bananas
565ml/1 pint double cream
1 tablespoon Camp coffee
seeds from 1 vanilla pod

Preheat the oven to 180 degree C (350 degree F). Give the almonds a rinse in water, drain them a little and mix them quickly with the icing sugar in a bowl until they are really sticky. Place on a baking tray and toast for 15 minutes in the oven until they are golden and crispy, turning them every couple of minutes. Don't let them turn black or they will taste bitter. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Make and bake the pastry (as above), remove from the oven and let it cool.

Spread the toffee as thick as you like across the base of the pastry. Slice the bananas and place on top of the toffee, then whip the cream. Add the Camp coffee - add a little less if you'd like a more subtle coffee flavour - and the vanilla seeds.
Then dollop the cream on top of the bananas, as high and as rough as you like.

Sprinkle the almonds over the top of the banoffe pie and serve immediately.

Coconut pancakes with bananas in palm sugar syrup

I asked Alastair what he wanted for brunch on Sunday. I had two possible dishes in mind, one involving baked eggs and the other pancakes. I gave him an option of savoury or sweet.

He choose sweet - pancakes it was!

Coconut pancakes with bananas in palm sugar syrup

Adapted from a couple of recipes seen on internets

Makes 6 medium-small pancakes (enough for 2 people)

For the pancakes

135g flour
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons caster sugar
4 tablespoons shredded coconut
130ml milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons melted butter

For the bananas

70 grams palm sugar
50 ml water
2 medium bananas, peeled and sliced

Mix together the flour, salt, sugar and coconut. Whisk in the milk, egg and melted butter until it all comes together.

Heat a frying pan on medium heat, melt some butter or a touch of oil. Add 1/4 cup of batter. When you start to see bubbles appearing on the surface, flip the pancake over and cook the other side for 1-2 minutes or until golden. Make the rest of the pancakes and keep warm.

Heat the water in a small saucepan and melt the palm sugar (you may want to grate it so it melts more quickly). Simmer until it's darkened and thick, add the sliced bananas and gently toss through the syrup. Serve with the pancakes.