Midnight Apple & Banana Cake

MIDNIGHT APPLE & BANANA CAKE

First things first, lets give a big hurrah to the top notch, super duper impressive, state of the art photographic skills demonstrated in the above photograph. For when is life better, then when viewed through the 2MP lens of a Windows smartphone? As always, I'm keeping it real. You can even see the little knife holes in the cake and remnants of said cake on the fork. I don't really think it gets much realer than that. Heck, I've even included the make shift cooling rack, which in this case is a small chopping board. Like I said, you know me, keeping it real and all that. What you see in all those cookery books and incredibly beautiful blog posts, is a little thing called food airbrushing, where food is tweaked and touched up to look as aesthetically pleasing, soul tempting and as close to perfection as possible. What you aren't seeing, is the more simplistic, slightly unorthodox yet equally beautiful reality, which basically looks like the photo above. So I'm here to show you what baking really looks like, which is imperfectly perfect, delicious, soul nurturing, unifying, handmade, heaven sent goodness (captured on a camera with approximately 2MP resolution or less).

Now putting that mini sassy statement aside, another thing to acknowledge here, dear readers, is that it's been a while since I wrote a little baking post for you. I've definitely been baking and cooking, you can count on that without a doubt as I'm a huge foodee. I guess that I just haven't been documenting my culinary pursuits lately, and that's mostly down to forgetfulness, and the fact that I've normally eaten most of my creation by the time the notion to photograph it, even crosses my mind. This little beauty above appears to be an exception. Derived from a week long desire to use the increasingly brown bananas sat on the top of my fridge, on Friday night, at midnight I decided I would knock up a banana cake whilst re-watching my Modern Family boxset. I also decided I would use the half eaten apple I'd stored in my fridge for a later date, as well as the nice brown sugar I recently bought from Lidl. Oh the wild life I lead. And so with that, the Midnight Apple & Banana Cake was born. 

Considering that it was 100% made by winging it (the ingredient measures below are typical ratios in most standard cake mixes), from the ingredients through to actually making the cake itself, I was very, very pleasantly surprised at the end result. Most cakes I derive through the art of winging it, I must say do not turn out too well. There's always room for improvement and a muttering of 'damn it, I should really follow a recipe next time'. This time wasn't one of those times. There's a reason I ate half the cake within twelve hours, and that's because it was surprisingly delicious. Moist but not too moist, flavoursome, rich, a lovely texture. It was something of a cake dream, which is why I simply had to share the recipe with you lovely people, should you want to try and make this cake for yourself too. Whether you're a baker or not, this cake is super easy to make, can be done within 30-40 minutes, adapted to suit your personal tastes, and you don't even have to make it at midnight. It will still taste just as good, and definitely make you super popular with whoever you share your cake with, even in the daytime. Trust me. Now goeth onwards and fill your life with the joy of cake. I promise it looks and tastes better than it does in the photograph.

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-YOU WILL NEED-

2 x eggs

4 oz self raising flour

4 oz butter

2 or 3 oz brown sugar

1tsp vanilla essence (optional)

2 x mashed bananas (the browner the better)

1/2 apple cut into thin squares (around 2mm thin)

* You can adapt the recipe by adding 1-2 oz chocolate, nuts, dried fruid, glace cherries*

* If you want a larger cake, go for 3 eggs and 6oz of butter/ flour/ sugar, and if you're trying to supersize then it's 4 eggs and 8oz of butter/ flour/ sugar*
*For decoration you may want to try an icing sugar glaze or melted chocolate*

-RECIPE-

001. Turn the oven to 180 degrees and lightly dust a baking tin or ceramic, oven proof bowl with flour, making sure all the surface is evenly covered.

002. Mash the bananas in a bowl with a fork until they look a bit like puree.

003. In another bowl, add the butter and sugar and blend together with a wooden spoon, until the butter turns a nice caramel colour.

004. Add the flour, two eggs and vanilla essence and mix together thoroughly, until you have a sloppy-ish (what a lovely word choice eh) mixture. Then stir in the bananas and chopped apple.

005. Pour mix into the baking tin/ bowl and smooth out evenly with the wooden spoon. Make sure you leave some mixture to eat (quality control and all that).

006. Cook for 20 mins, then check the progress by sticking a knife in and seeing if it comes out clean. If yes, take cake out of oven and leave to cool for 5 mins, before turning out onto a plate or wire rack. If not, leave the cake in for another 5 mins and check again, and once thoroughly cooked remove cake, leave to cool, then transfer to plate/ rack.

007. Eat whilst warm (and if you eat 1/2 the cake in one go, don't worry. I did the same too. It's cool).