On our Facebook page I asked for ideas to use a glut of lemons our tree has produced, and our followers and friends really came to my rescue.  So I offer as fair trade for all your wonderful lemon recipes, here’s the banana cake that won me Kev’s heart many a year ago… or at least won me his stomach, and we all know what a man’s stomach is the way to.

I actually don’t like banana cake myself, but this is a something quite different and instantly became a favorite for me too.

𝗞𝗘𝗩'𝗦 𝗕𝗔𝗡𝗔𝗡𝗔 𝗦𝗣𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗖𝗔𝗞𝗘

𝗜𝗻𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀

1 & 1/2 cups sugar

1 & 2/3 cups plain flour

¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon nutmeg

2 eggs, well beaten

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup water

1 cup banana, well mashed

𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius

Mix all dry ingredients thoroughly in a large bowl.

In another bowl, mix eggs, oil, water and mashed banana thoroughly.

Add wet ingredients to dry and beat until well blended.

Pour into greased and lined pans, and bake.

May take 50- 60 minutes if baked in a standard cake tin, or about 20 minutes in muffin tins of swiss roll tins.

Ice with a lemon icing when cooled.

𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀

Recipe doubles and triples well (it even halves well, but why would you want to?)

Works really well as muffins or a thin slab/slice (cook in a sponge roll tin), as loaves or whatever size/shape you want – just adjust cooking time accordingly and remove from the oven when a skewer pulls out of the cake cleanly.

Spices are optional and flexible – I ran out of cinnamon and added mixed spice instead. Feel free to play around.

Adding the zest of an orange or lemon to the cake batter is *MWAH*.

We eat a lot of fresh bananas, but don’t love them once they start to brown, so any banana with spots gets put into the freezer whole and used for baking. The skin will turn completely dark once frozen, but this is only cosmetic and doesn’t affect the fruit inside.

To use, just microwave your whole bananas for about 30 seconds each to mostly thaw, at which point the skin will slide off easily and the banana will be easy to mash/blend.

Enjoy!