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