We love bananas! But, ever since the floods hit Queensland a couple of years back, we’ve stopped buying bananas. They were as high as $14.99 a kilo, yikes! However recently, prices started to drop to around $5-6 (at the market) and now we’re back  to eating them again!  But if you go to the local supermarket here,  they’re still selling them for around $9.

For this cake, I used 4 really old and black bananas.  I bought them for $3.99 a kilo at the market.   Dad said ‘Wow, you must be rich!’ thinking that I had spent $10 a kilo just to make this cake! The secret to making a perfectly moist and yummy banana cake is to use extremely and I mean extreeeeemely ripe bananas to get the flavour, look and texture right. There was once when I used ordinary yellow bananas, it didn’t turn out quite as nice. So don’t be fooled by these pictures that have a yellow banana in the background, it has to be black and mushy, ok?

Apart from celebrating the drop in banana prices, this cake was served exclusively upon the arrival of my aunt and uncle who came down to visit us from Malaysia. This is for you Uncle Dil and Aunty Nola, love you heaps!

RECIPE FOR MOIST BANANA CAKE WITH CREAM CHEESE ICING
Adapted from Exclusively Food, with slight changes

Serves: 12
Prep time: 15mins
Cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients

For cake:
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
140g butter, softened
200g brown sugar
130g caster sugar
350g mashed ripe bananas ( 1.5 cups)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/3 cup milk
2 large eggs
For cream cheese icing:
90g cream cheese, softened
45g butter, softened
210g (1 2/3 cups) icing sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Method for cake

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius fan-forced. If you don’t have a fan forced oven, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

2. Grease the side and base of a 22cm diameter round cake pan. We use a springform pan for easy removal of the cake. Line base of the pan with non stick baking paper.

3. Place butter, sugar, banana, vanilla and eggs in a food processor.

4. Process for about 2 minutes. Scrape down sides of processor. Add milk and pulse to combine.

5. Sift flour and bicarb soda together into a large bowl. Add flour mixture to food processor and process until just combined.

6. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for about 50-60 minutes, or until a skewer or knife inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

7. Leave cake to cool on a wire rack.

8. Spread cooled cake with cream cheese icing.

 

Method for icing

Beat cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer until creamy. Add sifted icing sugar and beat until smooth. Add lemon juice and beat to combine. Spread icing over top and sides of cooled cake