wholemeal banana cake

Often, I find myself hungry in the evening after work. I invariably end up eating some crackers just to tide over the hunger until dinner-time. However, not only are the crackers not healthy, they are dry and as such, make me more susceptible to sore throat. In any event, the hunger is kept at bay for only a short while.

I am not a big fan of bananas. I have always had the belief that bananas are fattening. FIL insists that they are not fattening and in fact, they are energy-giving. As such, Da and I have been thinking of eating a banana each in the evening before dinner. Not only would it help to tide over the hunger, we would probably end up eating less for dinner (hopefully!).

There is a shop near Da's office selling various types of fruit. When he came home with a bunch of Dole baby bananas, I was fascinated by the bananas. They are so tiny and too cute to be eaten!

All fruit in the house are meant to be eaten otherwise they will go to waste. As such, I decided to make a wholemeal banana cake. If you are not fond of the nutty texture that tends to accompany wholemeal bread and wholemeal cake, you can substitute with plain flour totally. However, I would urge you to give this recipe a try. Not only was the cake soft and moist when cut on the same day that it was baked, it continued to remain so the whole of the next day, when left on the table without refrigeration. I do not know whether the cake would have lasted longer than two days without refrigeration because we did not have the opportunity to find out. All the slices were finished faster than a speeding bullet!

For the topping, I decided to use a mixture of chocolate rice and cinnamon sugar as Da and I had guests over at our home on the day that I baked the cake and there were little ones present at the dinner party. Wait a minute... who am I kidding? The overgrown babies also had a sweet tooth and enjoyed the topping.

If chocolate rice does not suit your palate, you can substitute the topping with a walnut topping (that is, crushed walnuts mixed with castor sugar) or any other topping of your liking.

Ingredients

100g wholemeal flour
100g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
75g butter (softened)
50g brown sugar
1 egg (lightly beaten)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup ground peanuts
200g mashed banana
1 tsp banana essence
chocolate rice
cinnamon sugar

Method

1. Grease a 3" x 7" loaf pan and line the pan with baking paper.

2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.

3. Sift the wholemeal flour, plain flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.

4. Whisk the butter and brown sugar at low speed till the mixture turns pale and fluffy.

5. Add half the beaten egg and whisk at low speed. Add the remaining beaten egg and whisk at low speed.

6. Add the ground cinnamon and ground peanuts and whisk till evenly mixed.

7. Stir in the mashed banana and banana essence and mix well using a spatula.

8. Fold in the flour mixture and mix using the spatula until evenly mixed.

9. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface.

10. Mix the chocolate rice and cinnamon sugar in a separate bowl and sprinkle the mixture over the top of the batter until top is entirely covered by the topping.

11. Bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

12. Cool thoroughly before slicing.

Tips

1. For the baking paper, I use Glad Bake.

2. It is advisable to sift the flour before using it so that the cake will rise better. Also, you can get rid of any hardened pieces of flour.

3. If you do not like the nutty texture of wholemeal flour, you can substitute with plain flour entirely.