thursday baking - banana coconut cake

We've no longer baking just from A Treasury of Baking as we want to share some of our favourite recipes from different sources. To be honest, getting through the book was becoming a bit of a chore and baking should never be a chore!

So today's recipe comes from the the Ripe cookbook by Angela Redfern. A beautifully illustrated book full of contemporary cafe food.

I made this banana coconut cake for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. Once iced, it ended up as an enormous cake! As my sister Sarah was in Wellington for the weekend she was able to take some of the cake to Christchurch for the rest of the family to try. We all agreed the addition of coconut added texture to what would otherwise be an ordinary banana cake. The icing is the best cream cheese icing ever - the perfect consistency for spreading or piping. I'll never use any other recipe.

I couldn't find fresh passionfruit to sprinkle on top and didn't want to resort to passionfruit syrup so went without. It would have been a delicious addition so once they're in season I'll make this cake again.

Banana coconut cake

1 1/2 cups desiccated coconut

300mls milk (for soaking)

185g unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups caster sugar

3 eggs

3 ripe bananas (mashed)

160mls milk

3 cups self-raising flour

Cream cheese icing

100g unsalted butter

600g icing sugar (sifted)

250g cream cheese (softened)

Juice of one lemon

1 cup long thread coconut (toasted) and passionfruit pulp for serving.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Soak the coconut in the first measure of milk while you get the rest of the cake underway.

Cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs one at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl and beating well between each addition. Add the milky coconut mix and mashed banana. Mix together. Add the second measure of milk and flour, alternating between each. Mix well and pour into a prepared (greased/lined etc) tin. I used a classic bundt tin which worked well.

Bake for about an hour or until a skewer is inserted into the centre and comes out clean.

To make the icing, combine the butter and icing sugar in a cake mixers until fine crumbs form. Add the cream cheese and lemon juice and beat on high for five minutes until light and fluffy. Ice when the cake it cool and sprinkle with toasted coconut (and passionfruit if you can get it).

Thursday baking - Apricot & Prune Cake

As we bake our way through A Treasury of NZ Baking...


Apricot & prune cake was popular with mum and her friends in the 90s and I remember quite liking it too! This is the first time I've made this cake myself and it tasted so deliciously familiar. Given how much I love dried fruit (especially prunes) this is definitely a cake I'll make again.

The recipe says to bake the cake in a ring tin but any cake tin would do. I used a bundt tin, partly because the weighty cast-aluminum tin helps my inadequate oven to evenly distribute heat, but also because mum always made this recipe in a bundt tin and it always worked well. I didn't sprinkle the second half of the cinnamon mix on top (because the top of a bundt cake becomes the bottom) - I saved it for my next apricot and prune cake.

It's worth thinking ahead and soaking the dried fruit in tea - without this step, the cake becomes quite dry after a day or so. Not that it lasted that long anyway... we had it for afternoon tea on a Sunday and then I took the rest into work for morning tea the following day.

Apricot & Prune Cake - week six (Annabelle White)

Cake
3/4 cup chopped dried apricots
3/4 cup chopped pitted prunes
water or cold tea
170g butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups standard flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk

Cinnamon mix
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp ground cinnamon

To serve
Icing sugar

Cover the dried fruit with tea or cold water. Leave for a few hours.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Grease a 25cm ring tin.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Follow with the dry ingredients and milk. Lastly drain the fruit and fold through gently.

Combine the ingredients for the cinnamon mix.

Place half the cake mixture in the greased tin and sprinkle with half the cinnamon mix. Place the remaining batter into the tin and sprinkle with the rest of the cinnamon mix (unless you're making a bundt cake like me!)

Bake for 45-60 minutes, or until a skewer in the centre comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes.

This cake will keep for 2-3 days in an airtight container.

Delicious served with cream and a dusting of icing sugar.