Banana Cake

We always have overripe bananas that need to be used. With just a few ingredients you can bake a delicious banana cake.

Just a little anecdote about bananas or rather banana cakes beforehand - it happened when we were anchored in a bay in Mayreau in the Caribbean. In the evening I noticed that we had very ripe bananas in our storage nets and I thought: "Tomorrow I have to bake a banana cake, otherwise we'll have to throw the bananas away".

At some point, in the middle of the night, I wake up because I feel something shooing through the air and then see a shadow that keeps flying from the saloon into our cabin and back again. It must be a bird or a large butterfly that came in through our open hatches. Sleepily, I just closed the door to the saloon in the hope that the winged creature would find its way back outside.

When we opened the door to the saloon in the morning, we saw the mess and I immediately thought of what it could have been and probably was - a bat or even several?! In any case, they had feasted on our bananas. There was nothing left of them except digested and undigested blobs scattered all over the saloon from top to bottom. This mistake cost me almost an hour of cleaning and I learned a lesson.

Recipe

Due to the constant movement of the boat at anchor or on passages, a kitchen scale does not work on SERENDIPITY IV. That's why I wrote down the measurements in cups and spoons.

Ingredients and Utensils

• 2 eggs

• 1 cup of cane sugar

• 4 to 6 ripe bananas

• ½ cup flour

• 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon salt

• ¾ cup ground almonds

• 100 g soft butter (2/5 of a 250 g package)

• 3 tablespoons whole almonds

• mixing bowl

• whisk and mixing spoon

• cutter (or big chopping knife)

• Cake tin with baking paper or Omnia oven with silicone insert

How it's done

1. If you are using a 'normal' oven, preheat it to around 180°C and line a cake tin with baking paper. I mostly use our Omnia oven, which has a silicone liner and does not need to be preheated.

2. Beat the eggs and brown sugar in the bowl until frothy.

3. Mash 3 to 4 bananas with a fork and add.

4. Add the flour, breadcrumbs, baking powder, salt and ground almonds and mix well.

5. Stir in the butter.

6. Cut the remaining 1 to 2 bananas into approx. 1 cm slices and stir into the dough.

7. Pour batter into prepared cake tin or omnia oven.

8. Roughly chop the almonds in a cutter or with a knife and spread over the dough.

9. Bake in the oven at approx. 180°C or in the omnia oven on a medium to low gas flame for approx. 50 minutes.

Tips & Variations

Recently I had ripe bananas but no eggs left. So I simply added an extra banana because I read that bananas can be used as an egg substitute when baking. It worked, but the cake wasn't quite as fluffy as usual.