Banana Pound Cake ( With Step-by-Step photos)

Over the weekend, I baked a Banana Cake. The original recipe was taken from a book titled "Oishiixtu!! Yakikashi!!" which directly translated to "Delicious !! Baked Cakes" written by author "Ikuko Omori". I altered her Banana Pound Cake's recipe for the cake below. It is less sweet and more ingredients is added to enhance the flavour.

Ingredients:

• 120 g of plain flour (you can use the finer cake flour)
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 65g of fine sugar
• 80g of butter (leave it in room temperature for while so that it is easier to cream)
• 2 eggs (medium sized)
• 2 medium-sized of ripe banana (meshed)
• 50 g of chopped almonds/hazenuts/walnuts

For decoration (optional):

• 1 banana - sliced
• Almond flakes

This is a butter-based cake, thus it is easier to make compared to sponges or chiffon cake. You should use a loaf pan for this, however I doubled the ingredients to make a bigger cake, thus used a square pan.

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius.

2. Cream the butter and the sugar together until fluffy with an electric mixer or an wooden spoon. I used an electric mixer since it is easier.

You should cream the butter mixture till it looked pale in colour. The sugar grains should not be visible and would be best if it had dissolved totally into the cream. Creaming is to incorporate air into the butter mixture, thus it should creamed till it is thick and fluffier.

3. This is perhaps the most complicated part of making the cake. Adding eggs to the butter mixture. Be patient and only add one egg at a time. Continued mixing when the egg is added. If the mixture appeared to be cuddling (butter and egg liquid seperating), do not panic, just sprinkle a bit of flour onto the mixture and mix as per normal. When successfully incorporated, the butter mixture would have doubled in volume and looked like whipped cream.

When creaming the butter, remember to scrape the butter off the side with a plastic spatular. As seen above, mix one egg at a time into the butter mixture. When the egg has fully-incorporated, add the other egg.

One of the way to prevent cuddling is to mix the butter mixture fast using an electric mixer. It would difficult if using hands. In any case, if the butter mixture appeared to be cuddling, sprinkle a bit of flour into the mixture and cream. The mixture will be back to normal.

4. Perfectly creamed butter mixture will looked pale and the volume would double in size after the eggs are added. At this point, mix in the meshed banana puree. I meshed the banana using a fork. To add some texture, I purposely left them in bits and pieces.

5. For a softer cake, one should always stiffed the flour. I usually stiffed mine twice and one last time into the butter mixture. Try not to stir too much when flour is added. This is to prevent glutten from forming which will toughen the cake. Sprinkled in the nuts and mix thoroughly.

6. Poured the cake batter into the cake tin lined with paper. Sprinkle the decorating banana and almonds flakes. I did not used almonds for decorating this time round.

7. A big cake like mine would take about 50 mins to 1 hour in the oven. For the small loaf tin, bake for 35 mins. As usual, poke the cake with a wooden skewer. It should come out clean if cooked.

My Banana Cake! The secret to a delicious banana cake is to use very very ripe banana. Del Moto big banana are not very suitable for this, I find. But the way, cut the cake only when it cool down. Otherwise, it will crumbled when cut.

Imagine having a slice of this cake with a cup of Earl Grey in the afternoon... C'est La Vie!