Banana Ginger Cake

I stupidly bought bananas thinking that I would remember to eat them before they became too ripe, so obviously that is exactly what happened. To be fair, it’s no bad thing, because then you get to make cake. My mum always used to make this for us, I think as a ploy to make us eat more bananas, so it’s a happy-memory cake for me. I’ve drizzled (I’m taking liberties with the word ‘drizzled’ since it’s more like poured) the cake with some lemon icing, but it’s just as nice without.

Ingredients

3 ½ oz butter

2tbps golden syrup

2 ½ oz caster sugar

2 ½ oz brown sugar

1 egg

3-4 bananas, mashed

8oz self-raising flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

2tsps ground ginger

1tbsp milk

Heat the oven to 160⁰C and grease/line whatever cake tin you’re using. I went for the silicone one my aunty gave me for Christmas.

In a large mixing bowl cream the butter, sugars and golden syrup together.

Add the egg and beat again.

Beat in the mashed banana.

Sift in the dry ingredients and finally add the milk and fold everything together until well combined.

Pour into the tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until a skewer when inserted comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

If you want to decorate it then mix together the juice of half a lemon with a bowlful of icing sugar and drizzle/pour over the cake.

P.S. Sorry I’ve hardly blogged anything in ages. At the moment my free time is generally taken up by being drunk/having lunch with my friends who are leaving soon. I promise to do more when all my friends have left and I’m sad and alone and only have cake in my life!

Owl Cake

Two of my lovely creative writing friends had a joint 21^st last Friday, so obviously a cake was in order. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the cake needed to be an owl. There is a great deal of owl love between us. What’s not to love about owls? They are just so owly.

Another exciting thing about it was that it was my first chance to use my beautiful new toy. Basically I went ahead and bought a KitchenAid (which I absolutely cannot afford - but I do what I like…) as a graduation present for myself. I’ve been so busy since handing in my dissertation though that I hadn’t even had the chance it use it yet! It is incredible and mixes things like a dream and I don’t know why I never bought one until now…Oh yeah, it’s really ridiculously expensive.

Anyway, in case you cannot tell, my colour choice for the owl was somewhat inspired by my new gadget.

Ingredients

6 eggs

9oz self-raising flour

9oz caster sugar

9oz butter

3tsps baking powder

To decorate

Butter

Icing sugar

Colouring

GLITTER

Sweets etc.

I decided to use my Lakeland hemisphere pan for this which means you need a butt load of mixture, hence the 6 egg malarkey.

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C. Butter a hemisphere pan (or normal round one) and a loaf tin.

Measure all the cake ingredients into a large bowl (or glorious KitchenAid), and mix until smooth.

Pour into the two prepared tins. Cover the big one in foil because it’s going to take a long time to bake and you don’t want the top to burn. Bake the loaf one for about 30-35 minutes, and the big one for around an hour to an hour and a half depending on depth/oven. Just make sure a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.

When you’re ready to decorate, I’d suggest making a little doodle of the owl shape you want first. Otherwise there is a knife/cake panic moment as you cut into it. I had a lot of owl-shaped inspiration from random stuff in my room but I decided on this shape.

Make your icing by creaming the butter, and then adding the icing sugar and colouring of your choice. Be prepared that you will need a massive amount of icing. If you want to pipe any decorations in a different colour then put some of the icing to the side before adding the colouring.

Cover the whole cake in icing, making sure to stick the ears and wings firmly to the main cake. Covering a crumbly cake in butter icing can be a bit of a nightmare, so have a mug of hot water to dip your knife into, which I find helps a lot.

Once the cake is covered, go nuts with your decoration! I decided to make some purple icing for the detail, and then just sort of had a chocolate button/coloured sugar/sprinkle/glitter spaz.