Banana Cake

You know how fresh bananas are really nice? And then in no time, they turn on you and show their true colours. That happened to me, yes, thank you, scuse me while I grab a Kleenex. Anyway, what better way to get rid of that traitor fruit than to mash it up and throw it in a deliciously buttery cake?

Banana Cake (makes one cake or 12 muffins) Recipe from the legendary Nesa cookbook

Cake

• 1 ripe banana, mashed
• 3 eggs
• 145 grams sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 125 grams regular flour
• 100 grams melted butter

Icing

• 75 grams dark chocolate (60-70% cocoa)
• 20 grams butter
• 2 tbsp cocoa nibs
• A pinch of salt

Turn the oven on to 170 degrees Celcius. Grease a muffins tray or cake mould with butter and set it aside. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar until the mixture has turned fluffy. Add the vanilla sugar, flour and baking powder and mix it until there are no little flour lumps left and you have an even texture. Mix in the melted butter and finally mash the banana last-minute (so it doesn’t turn brown) and stir it in. Pour the mixture into the cake mould and leave it in the oven for 30-55 mins (the original recipe said 55, but my oven made it in 30). Make sure you check it with a cooking pin after about 30 mins and if nothing sticks, it’s done. While the cake is cooling off, melt the chocolate, butter and salt in a saucepan and spread it onto the still warm cake. Sprinkle with cocoa nibs or chopped hazelnuts and serve lukewarm – the melted butter in the cake makes it so much juicier while it’s still warm. But careful, one piece tends to lead to the next, and the next, and before you know it, you awake at 3 am with chocolate drool on your shirt and reruns of Friends showing on telly (when was that show ever funny? I just can’t remember).