The Most Fabulous Banana Cake

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt*
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 cup mashed banana (2 - 3 large or 4 small very ripe bananas) – I like to keep it quite chunky
1 2/3 cups castor sugar
125 g cultured unsalted butter* in small chunks at room temperature
100 ml buttermilk (substitute normal milk if you don’t have buttermilk)
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
* you could use normal/salted butter and just not add the salt

Icing:
125 g cream cheese at room temperature
60 g cultured or normal unsalted butter, at room temperature
250 g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

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Preheat oven to 180 degrees and grease a round 26cm cake tin, loaf tin or muffin pan

• Place banana, sugar and eggs in a food processor and whiz for a minute
• Add butter and whiz for a minute more until thick and creamy
• Add buttermilk and vanilla and pulse with quick bursts until just mixed in
• Combine sifted flour, baking powder, salt and bicarb soda and add to banana mixture and mix in using quick bursts, scraping down the sides, until just combined
• Scoop batter into tin and bake for 30 – 35 mins or until a skewer comes out clean (don’t be surprised if it doesn’t rise a lot, it’s quite dense). When the cake is ready leave it to cool on a rack in the tin for 7 minutes then invert on rack to cool.

For the icing: cream the cream cheese and butter, then add the icing sugar and vanilla and whip until smooth

Decorate:
I made baby muffins and a thin cake in a slice tray. If you wish to make more of a celebration cake, bake a number of smaller round cakes and pile them on top of each other and double the icing quantities then smother the icing in between the cake layers and all over the cake. Alternately slice the cake in half horizontally with a long serrated knife and spread icing on the bottom layer, then sandwich together and spread a thick layer all over the cake smoothing it with a knife.

Recipe adapted from Belinda Jeffrey's 100 favourite recipes.