Banana cake

[idun]

I detest over ripe bananas, but have four in my kitchen and when I mentioned it to a friend, she said bake a banana cake.

I have looked at several recipes and was wondering if anyone has a good one.

I'll try it, but I just don't like that 'sweet cloying' taste that they get, so if that is the taste that transfers to the cake, well, I'm sure others will enjoy and not be as fussy as I am.

I have a basic larder in at the moment, but no buttermilk or cream. I have sugar, browns and white, SR and plain flour, baking powder, bicarb, lots of eggs, golden syrup, maple syrup and treacle. I also have some spices in, mixed, ginger and cannelle. And a few walnuts.

Any suggestions welcome.

[Catalpa]

I think the banana and walnut combo always works well because there's a bitterness with the walnuts that cuts through the sweetness of over-ripe bananas. However, for the past few years, my favourite banana cake is via Nigel Slater's black banana and chocolate cake recipe.

I'm not entirely sure whether the hazelnuts bring much to the party and having faffed around with the recipe as given (toasting and removing skins) I now just add already ground hazelnuts if I have them.

If you like a less sweet cake, use dark chocolate chips (or I use a bar and roughly chop it) or to make it more unctuous, use milk chocolate. I have a sweet tooth so dark chocolate makes it a bit too bitter for me but others love it.

[suein56]

As I am now a useless cook - I was quite good for over 30 years, but I guess I wore out my inventiveness - any recipe I might make has to be foolproof. This recipe is extraordinary simple and has never let me down, I found it on t'internet.

banana cake

• 110g (4 oz) butter or margarine

• 170g
  (6 oz) sugar (granulated, demerara, whatever is to hand)

• 2
  eggs
• 225g
  (8 oz) self raising flour
• 2
  large or 3 medium bananas, mashed
• Honey or cinnamon or nutmeg
  (optional)

Heat the oven to gas mark 4; 180°C

Grease a 2lb loaf tin

Mash the bananas with a sturdy fork

Cream the butter and sugar together and mix in

the eggs

Mix together the two yellow sludges you now have

Mix in the flour (flours for me as I use some

semi-complète not being overly fond of white flour)

Scrape into the loaf tin and bake for 40 minutes

then lower the temperature to gas mark 2; 150°C and cook for up to a further 30

minutes

Turn out onto a rack to cool

          Sue

[mint]

Sorry, id, I meant to give you this recipe earlier but I had to go to the pharmacie and walk the dog before dark.

Here is the recipe that I have used since 2011.  How can I be so precise about the date?  Well, it's one I found on the la Poste calendrier and it's not too sweet and you won't get overpowering ripe bananas.  I suppose that's why they call it "banana-bread"[:)]

Ingrédients

150g de sucre roux

85g de beurre doux

2 oeufs battus

4 bananes bien mures écrasées

1 pomme rapée (I don't bother peeling)

250g de farine levure incorporée

1/2 c à café de muscade rapé

1/2 cà café de cannelle (I know you don't like cannelle)

1 pincée de sel

Mix sugar, butter and eggs.

Add bananas and apple

Add flour, salt and spices if used

Not in the recipe but I put in a fistful of chopped walnuts (living in the South West, I have kilos worth of walnuts)

I use a square tin if I want a thinner cake and I have to share it around but, if it's just for OH and me, I use a loaf tin.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes at 180°

At a push and if you have no pudding, it's good for dessert with a dollop of vanilla icecream.

Freezes well.

[Graham & Brenda]

A slightly different suggestion for you:

Since we had a Lakeland banana bag       http://www.lakeland.co.uk/12159/Banana-Bag

we don't have over ripe or wasted bananas. Seems to good to be true but they do work (and I don't have a connection to Lakeland!!)

[Patf]

Eddie likes over-ripe bananas, he has one on his muesli every morning.

So you can send them here.

I also like them baked in the microwave, and find them good if you have an upset stomach.

[idun]

A good friend loves them just about black too. I like mine 'young' with green ends on them, but don't eat as many as I used to, as I am not sure where they were from a few years ago, but they were delicious and I was having several a day and they made me feel ill. In fact I couldn't eat them for a while after that, but I'm back on them now. I just over bought recently, hence the over ripe ones.

I am going to give one of these recipes a try tomorrow.  Hard to chose which one, so I'll ask my OH which he fancies, as it'll probably be him who eats it.

[Chancer]

They are only really ripe for human consumption when they are black throughout, eating them while green risks stomach problems.

I eat mine  mashed with rock salt and then cooked in my porridge, the salt breaks down even the most unripe ones to mush.

[Patf]

Coincidence - I get the weekly Rustica and this week's recipes feature the banana.

There's a recipe for Tatin aux 2 bananes:

Make a caramel with 150g sugar and a little water and pour into baking dish

Slice 2 plantains and 4 bananas over the caramel

Dot with 125g butter, sprinkle on brown sugar.

Spread pastry over all.

Bake 30 mins in a pre-heated oven at 160°C or gas 6.

Turn out upside down and serve with vanilla icecream.

The other recipes are for pancakes, and salmon cooked with a coconut sauce and bananas.

[idun]

[quote user="mint"]Sorry, id, I meant to give you this recipe earlier but I had to go to the pharmacie and walk the dog before dark.

Here is the recipe that I have used since 2011.  How can I be so precise about the date?  Well, it's one I found on the la Poste calendrier and it's not too sweet and you won't get overpowering ripe bananas.  I suppose that's why they call it "banana-bread"[:)]

Ingrédients

150g de sucre roux

85g de beurre doux

2 oeufs battus

4 bananes bien mures écrasées

1 pomme rapée (I don't bother peeling)

250g de farine levure incorporée

1/2 c à café de muscade rapé

1/2 cà café de cannelle (I know you don't like cannelle)

1 pincée de sel

Mix sugar, butter and eggs.

Add bananas and apple

Add flour, salt and spices if used

Not in the recipe but I put in a fistful of chopped walnuts (living in the South West, I have kilos worth of walnuts)

I use a square tin if I want a thinner cake and I have to share it around but, if it's just for OH and me, I use a loaf tin.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes at 180°

At a push and if you have no pudding, it's good for dessert with a dollop of vanilla icecream.

Freezes well.

I am going to mix these recipes up a little, being adventurous, if it doesn't work, well it won't be the last time I experiment and it goes to pot.

mint, walnuts are from my old region, well just about. I have good friends I visit and we used to have to drive down little D roads and there couldn't have been more walnut 'plantations'.

No idea if it is because they shake the trees to get the nuts, but after huge storms one year, as we drove over lots the trees were on their sides roots showing. Others seemed to have been pulled upright again and propped up. And that is what they did, propped the fallen trees up. And the next year they were all thriving again. My friends have a beautiful walnut wood kitchen[:D]

[/quote]

[idun]

I am always happy to make most foods up for others, even when I do not like them myself, but my was this a hard dish to do for me.

The smell of the banana as I mushed it up with a fork remains in my nose..........and I have been to the dentists today[:-))] so that is saying something.

As I said, I mixed up the recipes a bit, and it was sorta franglais.

150g sugar, 100g very softened butter, pinch salt, 8oz SR flour, (had no apples left so) small grated carrot, good pinch nutmeg and level t cannelle and 2 eggs. It has baked OK, it rose, took forty minutes a 150°. HOWEVER, it looks more like soreen inside, than a cake, so a 'bread'? and the taste, well, you have to love over ripe bananas to like this, as that is just what it tastes of..... because I did taste it........ and I hate it.

Husband says it'll probably be lovely hot with custard and I shall happily make him some custard. He also reckons it'll be a good thing to take walking, high energy food..... and the sooner he gets it out of the house........ the better....... I may even find myself saying 'go take a hike' within the next day or so........[blink][;-)]