Banana Nut Cake

I make this cake on a regular basis.  It is super easy to make and my family and I love it.  It is also one of the earliest cakes I perfected.  The texture is soft and moist as long as you do not overbake.  I adapted it from a recipe I found on another blog but I really couldn't remember where so I've to apologise to the original publisher.  I don't use any artificial flavouring and I've cut down the sugar and replaced with golden castor sugar.  Well, cakes are quite sinful and doing this makes me feel a little less guilty, especially when I'm feeding it to my kids and my old folks.

Ingredients:

The original quantities bake about a 7 inch square tin or one large loaf.  The quantities in brackets is 1/2 times more.  This is the amount I usually bake to get 1 large and 1 smaller loaf.

170g (255g) butter
170g (255g) castor sugar
2 (3) eggs, large
3 (4.5) tbsp milk
3 (5) large, over ripe bananas
80g (100g)  walnuts, chopped (optional)
225g (338g) plain flour
1 (1.5) tsp baking powder
1 (1.5) tsp bicarbonate soda

Method:

1. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Add eggs, one at a time and beat well.
3. Add milk and beat well.
4. Add banana and mix well.
5. Sift flour, baking powder and bicarbonate soda.  Fold into batter.  Add walnuts and fold in with the last batch of flour.
6. Bake at 180 degrees Celcius for 45-50 mins or until skewer comes out clean.  For a small loaf, reduce to 30 mins.

Tip: As with all cakes, do not overbake or you will end up with a dry cake.



Enjoy!



Truffle Filled Mooncakes

I made this just before the Mid Autumn Festival but had no time to post until now.  The recipe is as before in my post on "Finally My Perfect Snow Skin Mooncakes".  Instead of salted egg yolks, I replaced with chocolate truffles.

The white lotus paste from Phoon Huat was out of stock (probably in every outlet) when I went to buy them the Friday before the festival.  (I went to Toa Payoh outlet and called up the main branch at Geylang.)  I must stock up enough early next year.  I ended up buying from Kwong Cheong Thye.  KCT had many varieties of white lotus paste which they said were from different suppliers.  The one I bought was mid range (based on price) and I thought it was a bit too sweet and too sticky.  They also had many other types of pastes.  The good thing was you could taste them before buying.  I just stuck to white lotus paste.

I filled with several varieties of chocolate truffles and wrapped in different coloured skins.  The truffles in the picture above were a little hard and so it didn't look nice when cut.  Sorry for the dark picture.  It was night time and I was in a hurry so didn't get the lighting right.

Anyway, enough of mooncakes for this year.  Until I find really good pralines, I will be sticking with my traditional salted egg yolks.