Thursday, September 8, 2011

Banana cake with Lemon icing

Another recipe I made for my dessert table! This is like the sophisticated version of the Banana Teabread I made before and it’s just as delicious! The lemon icing adds some extra fresh taste to it as well.

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I’ve done a little experiment with the ingredient list and steps. I opted not to leave the steps out and turn it into one long story of what to do as I personally find that really unhandy and disturbing. Do you think it looks any better now I've shortened all the measurements? Or do tbsp and tsp tend to confuse you as well? Are the steps easier to read now?

Cake:
250 g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
115 g butter
225 g sugar
75 g light brown caster sugar
2 eggs
1/ 2 tsp grated lemon zest
2-3 bananas
1 tsp vanilla essence
50 ml or 4 tbsp milk


- In one bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
- Mix the butter with both sugars until light and fluffy in a separate bowl. Beat the
eggs in one by one and stir in the lemon zest.
- In another bowl mash the bananas (or use a blender) and mix in the vanilla essence
and milk.
- Add the banana mixture and the dry ingredients to the butter in a few additions,
alternating between the two of them. So, add a fourth of the banana mixture and
carefully mix it in. Then add a fourth of the dry ingredients and mix in. Then back
to the banana mixture, and so on.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake the cake
for about 30 minutes.

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Icing:
60 grams butter
250 grams icing sugar
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
4-5 tablespoons lemon juice


- Mix the butter until light and fluffy and gradually add the icing sugar.
- Mix in the lemon zest.
- Now beat in the lemon juice spoon by spoon until the consistency of the icing is
just right. Add more icing sugar if you accidentally make the icing too running and
add more lemon juice if you believe it is too thick.

I just only half the icing used in the recipe I looked up, but it was more than enough to cover the cake. However if you find yourself wanting to make a layered cake or feel for more decoration than you can always double the icing! Also, if you feel a skewer comes out of the cake dry, you might want to leave it in the oven a little longer anyway. In my case, banana cakes or bread all tend to come out a little thick on the inside. Somehow I can’t get them to the perfect consistency.
I think I’m keeping the numbers for the steps, just because I like it. However I can use a BOLD script to indicate >recipe here<. When looking at blogs a lot of the times I completely skip the nice story around the post and skip straight to the recipe! That’s kind of evil isn’t it?
Anyway! The cake! It’s a really nice cake especially if you’re going for fresh. It suits any summer party with the fruity flavours. However this would also work perfectly in winter (oh, maybe with chocolate icing?). I know I haven’t found a lot of cakes that weren’t worth making, but believe me, this one is worth making as well!

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