Before you ever bake your first cake there are always those paralyzing thoughts like it won't rise, the sugar will be too much or too little, the oven won't start and millions other intimidating fears of baking.
The perfect lazy cake to make at any time
Pulselive is here to help you overcome those fears. No one can ever go wrong with Banana Bread, guaranteed. Why? Because there's no secret technique to mixing these ingredients, you'll still get an amazing cake if you just throw everything together and mix.
Pastry chefs are yet to agree on whether it's 'banana bread' or 'banana cake' but all we need to know is, it tastes nothing like what we call bread in Kenya.
The Pulselive Twist to ultimate Banana Bread
Cardamom is the magical spice this week. Ripe bananas naturally have a distinctive scent but when paired with cardamom spice, they create an amazing aroma which can only be described as sweet!
Ingredients
3 or 4 ripe bananas
3 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking soda (In Kenya it's packaged as bi-carbonate of soda)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups margarine (melted)
1 tablespoon Cardamoms spice
2 teaspoons vanilla essence (optional)
Method
- As we said, you can easily throw all these ingredients into a bowl, mix, bake and still have a beautiful banana bread in the end.
- But if methodology excites you, here's a simple way to mix the ingredients. Start with a large bowl, peel the bananas and mash them.
- When bananas are well mashed, add sugar and mix until combined. Next add the melted margarine, vanilla essence if you like and the magic spice, ground cardamoms.
4.Add three eggs to the mixture then add the flour bit by bit as you mix to combine.
Baking Tip: Maintaining a 1:1 ratio for your ingredients helps in getting perfect cakes everytime you bake. For example, in this recipe, we used 3 cups flour, 3 eggs and 3 teaspoons of baking soda. We also used 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 1 1/2 cups of margarine. Flavouring agents are normally up to you and your taste buds.
5.Spread some margarine on your bundt cake tin and dust with some flour before you pour the batter inside. You can use any other shape of a cake tin.
6.Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. Bake the cake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when dipped through the cake.
This spiced Banana Bread is perfect as a breakfast snack or even dessert, we suggest you try it with some ice cream.
Banana Bread with real bananas will have blackish-purplish strands, scientists say these are formed through some odd oxidation which happens while baking. This writer doesn't trust any banana bread without this colouration.