banana cake

I have been very quiet of late. This is mostly because I put myself on a baking hiatus, after realising that my dedicated visits to the gym were not making much of a dent in my expanding waistline. And when you stop baking, you lose interest in blogging about it. However, I have started running again (fingers crossed I can keep running), and so I am very tentatively emerging from my self-imposed hibernation.

A group of us at work have been celebrating our birthdays by organising a cake and card for the happy birthday girl (or guy). So we've only had 2 so far, but I'm sure it will continue! I missed out on the first one, due to being insanely ill, but for the second one, one of the girls asked if I'd be able to buy the cake. Now, why buy a cake when you can bake one...? :)

We'd already had chocolate cake, and while another girl and I knew Sarah would love a carrot cake, I figured that after already having force fed the girls two different types of carrot cake, that I should probably not go for it a third time. So I decided on a deliciously moist banana cake with white chocolate frosting instead, which I found here.

You'll notice in my photo below that I also made my first attempt at cake writing :) Not a bad first attempt, ignoring the fact that I had fully intended to write 'happy birthday Sarah' and not 'Sarah happy bday'... Anyway, the photo was actually taken before I smudged some of the letters while trying to make space for the cake in the fridge, so if any of the girls are reading this that would explain why it may not look *exactly* how you remember it :)

Ingredients

2 very ripe bananas (of large-ish size)
125 ml sour cream
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
170g caster sugar (or soft brown sugar)
125ml vegetable oil
200g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Method
1. Grease and line a 23cm round cake tin.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
3. Sift together the flour, salt and leavening.
4. Mash the bananas and mix in the sour cream and eggs, with electric hand beaters.
5. When the mixture is smooth, beat in the oil and sugar. Then add the dry ingredients and beat on high speed for 2 minutes.
6. Pour the mixture into the pan, and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the cake tests done.
7. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then invert onto a wire rack.
8. Frost.

And for the white chocolate cream cheese frosting...

Ingredients
200g full fat cream cheese
200g white chocolate

Method
1. Melt the chocolate and cool slightly.
2. Stir in the cream cheese.

(for the letters I made a cone out of baking paper, cut a hole in the tip of the cone, melted some dark chocolate, added some icing sugar, spooned some of the chocolate into the cone, and hoped for the best!)