Gooey Delicious Banana Cake (Revisited)

Charles Campion's Banana Cake is a recipe I copied across to my blog from a post that originally appeared on a food chat board, or in my general online diary, or was sent via email… or in one of the many places I shared my food experiences before I finally realised I was "stealth-blogging" and set up Kavey Eats!

It's such a good recipe I always intended to go back and add photos the next time I made it… but, although I've enjoyed making and eating it so many times since, I never have.

My talented-photographer-friend Matt Gibson made it recently and showed me his gorgeous photos. My brain started to tick tock tick tock and I discarded the plan to simply slot his photos into that old post, and asked him to guest blog it afresh instead.

Sharing the same recipe on a blog twice might be odd but Matt's lack of food processor means he's brought some new advice to the recipe, not to mention his confirmation that it's a doddle even for novice or nervous bakers.

Over to Matt:

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One evening, a week before Christmas, I peered into my fruit bowl. My three remaining bananas stared forlornly back at me. Over-ripe and -- based on evidence from the two I'd already eaten -- also rather bruised underneath. What to do?

Twitter to the rescue. "Got a banana bread recipe" I asked. "Only this one I've found is American, and I have no idea how many bananas there are in two-and-one-third cups."

Auntie Kavey responded instantly, pointing me at her Charles Campion's Banana Cake page. Not only did it sound easy -- always a bonus for an inexperienced baker like me -- but it called for three medium-sized bananas, exactly what I needed to make use of.

So, I dived in, stymied briefly by the local Co-Operative supermarket having run out of both eggs *and* caster sugar (hint, Co-Op: more people than normal are probably baking stuff in the week before Christmas.)

Another minor speed-bump in my road was the first instruction in the recipe, "Measure all ingredients straight into your food processor and whizz into smooth batter," which rather assumes you own something as fancy as a food processor. Still, at least I've got an electric whisk. Instead of boshing it all together I cubed the butter, which I figured would be the difficult-to-mix bit, and rubbed it into the sifted flour and sugar until I had a breadcrumb-like consistency. Then I added everything else, roughly mixing as I went. Finally I took up my electric whisk and zizzed the mixture to a nice smooth batter.

And that was the hard work done, really. I poured the mix into my greased, floured loaf-tin. Pausing only briefly to check I was neither very young, very old, nor pregnant, I took my life in my hands and tasted a wooden spoon's scraping's-worth of the cake mix that had clung on in the bowl. Niiiice. So, all the signs were good.

I popped the loaf tin straight into my pre-heated oven, did the washing-up, and went to post some "before" photos on Twitter. This is the 21st century, after all; if you've not tweeted about it, it hasn't happened.

About forty-five minutes later I was walking past my kitchen door and had to stop and stick my head in and inhale the lovely banana-ey bready smell that was coming from the oven. Another fifteen minutes and I was pulling open the oven, crossing my fingers, and manhandling the loaf tin onto the kitchen worktop with two strategically-positioned tea towels (I know, I know. "Oven gloves" has been just above "food processor" on my kitchen equipment shopping list for about eight years now.)

It looked good. Dark-to-golden brown, with a nice light sponginess showing through the split that had formed on the top. After a few minutes, I gently tried to slide the loaf out, but it felt a bit too wobbly and was clinging to the sides, so I tried to practise some patience and left it to cool in its tin for a while. Once it wasn't so hot, it slid out more easily, and kept its nice loaf shape as I rolled it onto the cooling rack, though the gooey bottom did sink a millimetre or so into the rack as it settled densely down.

After my disaster with Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake, which stayed entirely liquid in the middle when I made it, I was a little scared to finally start slicing into my banana cake, but my fears were unfounded. It was a little gooey at the bottom, but pleasantly so, and the rest was a lovely moist cake with a delicious light crust on top and at the edges (the end parts were my personal favourite.) The banana flavour was good, and I hadn't overdone the vanilla, despite my worries.

All in all, this was a fantastic recipe, easy for the baking beginner, even if you're only armed with a £4.99 electric whisk from Argos that smells a bit like a Scalextric car when it's running. You'll never let over-ripe bananas go to waste again.

My beginner's tips:

* "a few drops" of vanilla essence is just under a quarter of a teaspoonful.
* Wait until the loaf's cooled a bit before you try to de-tin it.
* Don't shop for cake ingredients in the Co-Op just before Christmas.

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Here's the recipe again with my original notes below. ~ Kavey

Gooey Delicious Banana Cake

Ingredients
175 grams caster sugar
225 grams white self-raising flour
100 grams unsalted butter (I always use lightly salted actually)
3 tablespoons fresh milk (I used fully skimmed as that's what we buy)
2 large fresh eggs
3 medium sized, very ripe bananas
A few drops vanilla essence

Method

• Preheat oven to 185 C (adjust down for fan ovens).
• Measure all ingredients straight into your food processor and whizz into smooth batter.
• Butter a large loaf tin well, then throw in some flour, tap and turn the tin to coat the flour over all surfaces and then tap out any excess into the bin/ sink.
• Pour the batter into the tin.
• Bake for an hour.

Note: Campion says "Because we are looking for a soggy end product, the old-faithful test of sticking in a skewer and withdrawing it clean is not appropriate. With practice you'll simply need to glance at it to tell. In the meantime, because of the style of cake we're trying to achieve, there's a wide margin of error to make things easier."

Note: If it helps, I find the cake rises delightfully and the top turns a lovely rich chocolatey brown (darker than golden brown) and also usually splits, like a lemon drizzle cake.

All images by Matt Gibson.

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Micah's Chocolate Meringue Pie

Since it was published in 2002, Unwrapped: Green & Black's Chocolate Recipes has sold more than half a million copies. Its recipes for chocolate coffee and walnut cake, chocolate truffles, chocolate pecan pie, chocolate salted caramel tart, white chocolate cardamom mousse, chocolate flapjacks, chocolate ginger cake, chocolate brownies (is the word "chocolate becoming redundant yet?) have proved enduringly popular.

Much excitement has therefore greeted the sequel, Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Recipes: The New Collection, edited by Micah Carr-Hill, Green & Black's Head of Taste, especially since there is now a much-expanded range of Green and Black's chocolate to use.

Micah has asked for chocolate lovers to contribute their favourite recipes and has collated the best put forward by chefs, celebrities, food writers, bloggers, chocolatiers, bakers and cake-makers and competition winners. Just reading the list of contributors in the acknowledgement section at the beginning of the book made me lick my lips in anticipation!

The book covers a lot of ground, from cupcakes to cookies to cheesecakes to tarts to soufflés to pies to puddings to ice-creams to truffles… I had wondered whether the book could possibly offer as tempting a selection as the first book without covering the same ground again or providing more obscure recipes, but I shouldn't have worried. It's an excellent collection of recipes in its own right and definitely a worth successor to Unwrapped.

A few months ago, I was kindly invited to the book launch event at Great Queen Street, where we were treated to delicious savoury titbits from the restaurant's menu and lots of sweet treats made to recipes in the book. Even before being given my own copy of the book to take home, I had already picked out the first recipe I wanted to try - Chocolate Meringue Pie.

As well as being one of the recipes Micah wrote himself (which I wanted as it would be sorta, kinda, vaguely like having him cook for me – I cooked for him recently, after all!), it's also heavy on the eggs, and would allow us to use some of our goodie bag of Clarence Court eggs, received after a wonderful egg evening at Hix Soho. I've bought these eggs before, from Waitrose and they really are fabulous; the yolks in particular have a very good flavour (and colour). And if you think eggs are just eggs, I'd urge you to do a side-by-side comparison of Clarence Court against your supermarket's regular free-range eggs and any others you usually buy. You will notice the difference in taste!

Note: Micah advises that you need electric beaters or an electric mixer for this recipe as the meringue is a hot meringue, for which the egg whites are heated by the sugar whilst they are being mixed. He also suggests investing in a blow torch for browning the meringue, though we managed without.

Micah's Chocolate Meringue Pie

Ingredients
Pastry
140 grams plain flour
30 grams icing sugar
75 grams chilled, unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 large free-range egg yolk
Custard
4 large free-range egg yolks
45 grams caster sugar
20 grams plain flour
350 ml full-fat milk
70 grams dark (70% cocoa solids) chocolate, chopped finely
Meringue
300 grams caster sugar
5 large free-range egg white

Note: This recipe is for a single large tart made in a 24 cm tart tin, to feed 6-8. As you can see, we made smaller individual tarts instead.

Method

• To make the pastry, sift the flour and icing sugar together before rubbing in the butter to achieve a breadcrumb texture. Add the egg yolk and mix until the ingredients come together, adding a tiny splash of cold water, if needed. We did both steps in our food processor, as we usually do for pastry.
• Shape into a ball, flatten slightly, wrap in cling film and chill for at least an hour.
• Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C.

• Micah suggests grating the pastry into the tart tin and pressing it evenly into the base and edges. We stuck to the traditional rolling it out technique. Once the tart tins were lined, we cut some of the excess away but left the pastry flopping over/ above the edge a little to allow for any shrinkage.
• Prick the base and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

• Bake the tart shell for 10-15 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

my new Kitchen Aid mixer - Intergalactic Unicorn

• Meanwhile, make the custard by whisking together the egg yolks and sugar, sifting in the flour and whisking it in. Heat the milk to boiling point then pour it onto the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Return the mixture to the saucepan and bring to the boil over a low heat, still whisking. When it comes to the boil, continue to whisk constantly for another 5 minutes, still over a low heat. It will be thick and smooth.
• Remove from the heat and add the chocolate, whisking until fully melted and incorporated. Pour into a bowl, cover the surface with cling film to prevent a skin forming and leave to cool.

• To make the meringue, reduce the oven temperature to 200 degrees C. Pour the sugar onto a baking tray and place in the oven for 7 minutes. Meanwhile beat the egg whites until stiff. Remove the sugar from the oven and quickly decant into a heatproof jug. We found this much harder than it sounds. Set the mixer onto a low setting and slowly pour the hot sugar onto the egg whites, taking a couple of minutes to do so.

• To assemble, pour the chocolate custard into the cooled pastry case and spread to form an even layer. We had made four pastry cases but had enough custard to fill three to a decent level. Pour or spoon the meringue over the custard. You can smooth it with a knife but we and Micah both prefer the natural mounds and peaks.
• As we had a lot of meringue left, we filled our leftover fourth pastry case wholly with meringue! If you make individual tarts like we did, you may want to adjust the ratios of custard to meringue. If you stick with Micah's one large tart, they'll presumably be just fine.

• Micah advises using a blow torch to brown the surface of the meringues but we found a short stint under a very hot grill worked very well.

The pastry was light and sweet and simple and Pete had rolled it super, super thin, which was fantastic.

The chocolate custard was a little too liquid though it tasted great. I'm not sure if this is how it is meant to be though, as the photograph in the book shows the finished pie – no chocolate custard in sight! Perhaps we didn't leave it to cook long enough after bringing it to the boil, as we didn't time the five minutes and it seemed to thicken pretty fast and you can see it looks like a pretty thick custard in the photos above.

The meringue was sweet and light.

I'd really like to use both the pastry and the chocolate custard in other recipes.

Can you suggest any ideas?

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Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Recipes: The New Collection is currently available from Amazon for just £9.19 (RRP £16.99).

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Making Gingerbread Houses with LexEats

I have always wanted to make a gingerbread house. It's Domestic Goddess baking, Blue Peter model house making and Grand Designs Goes Hansel & Gretel all rolled into one!

I don't know why I've never done it before other than that I found it too daunting, I guess.

So when Lex announced her special gingerbread house making supper club dates, I signed up. Quickly. Before I could chicken out.

A few days ahead of time, Pete helped me mix together and roll out the dough and I carefully cut out my wall and roof slabs, cutting simple door and windows and scalloped roof edges. Pete kindly baked my slabs whilst I was out gallivanting at The Chocolate Festival and Bar Boulud. I was really pleased with the careful shaping, even thickness and pretty colour.

On Sunday at noon I took my place in Lex and Johanna's open plan kitchen diner and, after being welcomed with mugs of delicious hot soup, we got to work. Somehow, in transporting my slabs, one of them had cracked, so my first act was to affect a sugar-cement fix, embedding pieces of wooden skewers into the icing on the back of the slab. I left that piece to dry and started assembling the rest of my house. I was soon slathering sugar-cement all over the place (myself included) and raising the walls. To my delight, the fix held and all four walls were eventually up.

My house, with fellow builder, Craig, behind

My first roof slab went on well and I was feeling happy.

And then disaster stuck.

I pressed down a little too firmly when pushing the second roof slab onto the sugar-cemented gables and it snapped vertically down the middle. Aaaaaargh! Disappointed with myself, I tried another fix job with more skewers and icing and left it to dry on the windowsill.

We paused our efforts for a fantastic starter of cured salmon with toasts and salad (with fresh leaves and herbs and a really special maple syrup dressing) followed by a selection of mains including roast lamb, honey glazed ham and an array of salads and vegetables.

When the sweets came out I was excited but had absolutely no design ideas or thoughts on where to start. I began with the (unbroken) roof slab and affixed stripes of chocolate fingers, sherbet chewy straws, jelly tots and smarties. I quickly realised I had no unified theme in mind and my first efforts weren't too pretty so I randomly decorated the various walls in completely different and un-matching styles!

The first time I tested my broken roof panel, it quickly sagged along the break again. And the same the second time. I was starting to think I'd have to take my house home in pieces and fix it at home.

Finally, I slathered an absolute tonne of sugar-cement on the top surface and used long strawberry chews to hold it together along it's width. And after I let that dry a while again, I used three skewers laid across from gable to gable to take the slab's weight before (carefully) pushing it into place.

Inspired by another participant's Chapel Of Love, I adorned the entrance side of the house with a simple K *heart* P. The snowman was added later, inspired by a similar one by yet another participant (though his original had a lovely smile and three buttons down his belly).

Delighted as I originally was about how neat and well-shaped my slabs were, my finished house, I freely admit, is ugly as hell. But I had such great fun making it (breakages and all) that I don't mind at all. And once Lex had wrapped it all up in cellophane tied with ribbons, even mine looked a little more glamorous!

During the decorating, we were treated to mulled wine sorbets and later, a truly marvellous home-made Christmas pudding with nutmeg custard. The flames when it was doused in rum and set alight burned tall, fierce and long! And it was really delicious.

As well as my house I made a gingerbread man and a gingerbread woman.

Does this look wrong to you too?

Unhappy with the shapes of the cookie cutters I had been able to find in the shops (all of which seem to have amputated legs) I searched for some images I liked online, adapted them to create my own paper templates and carefully cut mine out by hand. Yes, it took me a while!

I decorated them very simply and quickly, after finishing my house. I think they came out rather better!

I had such a lot of fun (and was really inspired by some of the more elegantly decorated houses that some of the other participants created) that I'm determined to try again, perhaps scaling down the size and coming up with a design in advance.

The Gingerbread Supper Club menu

Click here to see Lex' recipe, templates and guidelines to create your own gingerbread house.

Thanks, Lex and Johanna, for a really fun afternoon and delicious meal. You are both wonderful hosts!

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Angela Nilsen's Ultimate Quiche Lorraine

In February 2007 I chanced upon a marvellous cookbook: The Ultimate Recipe Book by Angela Nilsen. It had just been published, so I'm not sure how (or where) I came across it so soon, in the days before my compulsive food blogging.

But I was instantly taken with Nilsen's approach of selecting 50 classic dishes and setting out to define the ultimate recipe for each one. In her quest she used her own considerable skills and knowledge of cooking and also consulted with many expert chefs, food writers and regional specialists to glean as many insider tips and suggestions as possible. Then she tested, tested and tested again, fine-tuning as she went.

The result is this wonderful cookbook, published by BBC Books under the brand of Good Food Magazine (for whom Nilsen worked as Food Editor and then Acting Food Director before creating the Ultimate series of recipes).

In her introduction to quiche Lorraine, Nilsen points out that "what you don't put into a quiche Lorraine is as important as what you do". It's a good reminder that quiches with "salmon, watercress, brie, even broccoli" might be jolly nice but are not Lorraine!

Quiche Lorraine is a simple dish with just a few ingredients. To me, that's where it's beauty lies.

One of Nilsen's advisors for this recipe comments that a great quiche Lorraine should be "like a rich savoury custard with lots of bacon gently set in it. The custard should be creamy, not solid, and the tart slim."

We enjoyed this quiche recipe when we first made it, not long after buying the book but with the huge influx of cookery books I've amassed in the last couple of years, the book had been neglected at the back of the shelf. Recently I yearned for a good home-made quiche and dug the book out again.

Angela Nilsen's Ultimate Quiche Lorraine

Ingredients

Pastry
175 grams plain flour
100 grams cold butter, cut into pieces
1 egg yolk
cold water

Filling
200 grams smoked or unsmoked lardons
50 grams Gruyere
200 ml crème fraîche
200 ml double cream
3 eggs, well beaten
pinch of ground nutmeg

Notes
We used smoked Denhay bacon cut into pieces.
We used a strong, well-aged Gruyere and doubled the amount to 100 grams.
As it was the nearest available pack size, we used 170 ml of double cream.
We added the extra egg white (leftover from the pastry) into the custard filling, which compensated for the reduced cream content.

Method

• Make the pastry by putting flour, butter, egg yolk and 4 teaspoons of cold water into a food processor. Process in pulses until the mix binds.

• Line a 23cm diameter flan dish or tin (we buttered and floured ours). Nilsen suggests a tin that is about 2.5 cm in height.
• On a floured surface roll the pastry out as thinly as you can.
• Ease the pastry into the base of the dish, trimming the edge so it sits slightly above the lip of the dish (to allow for shrinkage). Lightly prick the base with a fork and chill for 10 minutes.

• Preheat the oven to 200 C (180 C fan).
• Line the pastry with foil and weigh down with baking beads (or any other suitable weight – we used a smaller metal pie tin). Bake for 15 minutes.
• Remove the beans and foil and bake for another 4-5 minutes until the pastry is pale golden.

• If you notice any small holes or cracks, patch up with leftover pastry trimmings.
• While the pastry cooks, prepare the filling.
• Dry fry the lardons for a few minutes until they start to colour. Nilsen suggests discarding the cooking fat and draining but we tipped it into the custard mix for added flavour.

• Cut three quarters of the cheese into small dice and finely grate the rest.

• Scatter the cooked lardons and diced cheese over the pastry base.

• Beat together the crème fraîche, double cream and (pre-beaten) eggs. Add nutmeg and seasoning. (You shouldn't need much salt given the bacon and cheese).

• Pour into the pastry base, over the bacon and cheese.

• Scatter the grated cheese on top.

• Bake for about 25 minutes at 190 C (fan 170 C) or until golden and softly set. The centre shouldn't feel too firm.

• Remove from the oven and allow the quiche to settle for a few minutes before serving.

As you can see, our pastry was just a touch soggy in the base, though this didn't detract at all, for me. This may be because we didn't roll the pastry thin enough or because it needed an extra minute or two of blind baking.

This is a really delicious recipe and very straightforward. I definitely recommend that you try it.

Use only the recommended 50 grams of cheese if you want a milder, more custardy flavour.

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The Ultimate Recipe Book by Angela Nilsen is currently available from Amazon for just £10.90.

A list of the recipes covered can be found in one of the customer reviews.

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