Sinkier than the Titanic
Back to cake baking, and after the soda bread success what could go wrong?! I had some bananas that were heading towards the wrong side of ripe, so I thought a banana bread would be a good idea. BBC GoodFood have a plethora of banana bread recipes so it was tricky to decide which to make. Until I spotted that one of them was a Gregg Wallace recipe. And if anyone knows about cakes and desserts, surely it is Mr Wallace.
Ways I changed it (not necessarily for the better…):
- I didn’t use any walnuts (because I didn’t have any!);
- I didn’t use the milk – the recipe doesn’t specifically refer to it, (I think it must be included in “mix everything together”), so I forgot (I am professionally forgetful at the moment);
- I added some “exciting” flavours: cinnamon; vanilla essence; and maple syrup.
Another “easy” bake! Hooray?:
- AARRGGHH creaming butter and sugar again!!! Step 1 was handed over to my boyfriend. And then we went and bought a little electric hand mixer.
How it came out:
A compact loaf – handy for putting in your pocket. Or for fixing walls.
- Deja-vu! It was looking pretty good and then – DISASTER – all of a sudden it sank faster than the Titanic! I was left with a banana bread that was flatter than a blueberry lime drizzle cake! Gregg had promised a “light and moist” loaf, but I could have used mine instead of polyfilla to fix that crack in the wall I haven’t got round to yet.
- As this is the second time this has happened, I did a more thorough search into what might be causing it:
- the mixture had too much liquid in it and was therefore too heavy. I might have been guilty of this for various reasons: the bananas were quite big (and I mushed them up LOADS); the egg was large; I added maple syrup too… but I didn’t use the 50ml milk!
- I didn’t cook it for long enough. I think this is most likely, seeing as it is probably what happened to the BLD cake too. And I did peek in at it a few times too…
- In spite of the flatness and challenging texture, the flavour was really good! Or maybe people were just saying that to me so that I wouldn’t cry???
Personal Progress:
- Baking lessons learnt:
- DON’T OPEN THE OVEN DOOR!
- Leave things to cook until they are actually ready.
- Physical progress:
- Still unable to cream stupid butter and sugar;
- Still needing a sleep straight after a 30 min baking session;
- Still not doing all the washing up afterwards (THANK YOU BOYFRIEND!!!).
I’m sure this would be even more fabulous if you cooked it for long enough:
Banana & Walnut Loaf – BBC GoodFood
Caroline Crimson x
