Banana Cake

I've been home for two weeks now and it's been great. Admittedly, I've spent most of the time eating and watching movies and baking with my mum. But it has been fun.

One of the things we baked recently was this banana cake - it's a recipe of my Mum's that she's been baking for as long as I remember, and I'm glad I finally got around to taking pictures of it to share with you today. This cake is rather sweet, but the dark chocolate chips definitely add the right amount of bitterness. It is easy to make, and trust me, easy to consume.

Level of Difficulty: Easy – you just combine all the ingredients in one bowl! It doesn’t get easier.

Average Cost: $ - unless of course bananas near you are expensive. Every other ingredient is pretty common.  

Menu Options: Obviously, you can add or subtract the amount of chocolate, or change the type of chocolate. I’m sure you could add more fruit, too. I haven’t tried it, but if you want to make the recipe healthier, you could try using whole wheat flavour.

Slightly adapted from: Australian Women’s Weekly – I do mean slightly adapted.

Makes one very large banana cake – I recommend using a square tin for this cake (23 cm square cake pan) as it is rather large and rises significantly – so if using a round tin use a large, deep set one. I cut my cake into relatively small pieces, but the calorie count here is for a square cake sliced into 15 pieces.

What you need:

-          1 cup castor sugar

-          2 ¾ cups self-raising flour

-          1 tsp bicarbonate soda

-          1 cup vegetable oil

-          4 eggs

-          5 bananas – make sure they are overripe – that is when they have the best flavour

-          1 cup dark/bittersweet chocolate chips

What to do:

Preheat an oven to 160 degrees Celsius and grease your cake tin.

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients. Place the dry ingredients in before the wet ones. Using a handheld or stand mixture, beat the ingredients together.

The ingredients should be completely combined. The mixture should be smooth and a light yellow colour – there should be very few banana chunks if the banana was mashed correctly and the mixing is complete.

Using a wooden spoon, stir in the chocolate chips until they are evenly spread throughout the mixture.

Pour the mixture into your tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes. When the cake is a beautiful golden brown and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean, the cake can be taken from the oven. The top of the cake may possibly split, but don’t worry, it still looks pretty.