My favourite cake (thanks Nigella)

Thought I'd lay off the subject off my mental health and get back to baking. I went to see my Grandmother yesterday which gave me the perfect excuse to make a cake. That's the problem when there's only two of you in the house – if you try to eat a whole cake between you either you'll end up fat or the cake will end up stale. My advice: grab every palming-off opportunity that comes your way, be it via family, friends, colleagues or at birthday parties (although of course always retain half the baked good for yourself).

http://www.nigella.com

I decided to make my favourite cake (apart from poppyseed cake which I couldn't be fucked to make at short notice). My boyfriend and I have made it several times this year and everyone who tries it raves about it. The original recipe comes from Nigella Lawson's “How to be a Domestic Goddess”. Despite occasionally being irritating on screen, Nigella's recipes are some of the best I've come across, with this being a classic example. We've altered her recipe by upping the amount of rum that goes in and adding dark chocolate (which, to be fair, she suggests trying in the book). The result is a very moist combination of bananas, rum, walnuts and chocolate. It might sound a bit much, but trust me, you'll love it.

Ingredients 

100mg raisins or sultanas

150ml rum – I used spiced rum on this occasion but any good rum will do

150g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

125g unsalted butter, melted

150g caster sugar

2 large eggs

4 ripe, mashed bananas (Nigella says to use small ones, but I use large ones for extra moisture)

100g dark chocolate, broken up into bite-sized chunks (it's nice to have a variety of sizes)

50-100g walnuts, depending on how nutty you like it (although personally I'd stick to 50g)

1 tsp vanilla extract

You'll also need a large (2L) loaf tin either buttered or lined to stop the cake from sticking.

Before making the cake you'll need to mix the raisins with the rum in a small saucepan, bring to the boil, remove from the heat, cover and let sit for an hour.

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C (sorry, but I don't know what that is in Farenheit. Who the hell uses Farenheit anyway? And apart from My Dad's retro oven I haven't seen many people using Gas Marks lately either)

2. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a medium bowel and set aside

3. In a large bowel beat together the melted butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs one at a time followed by the bananas

4. Add the walnuts, raisins, left over rum, chocolate and vanilla essence

5. Slowly mix the dry ingredients into the mixture

6. Tip into the loaf tin and bake for 60-75 minutes, or until a tooth pick comes out clean

Technically you're meant to then cool the damn thing, but the smells normally make me so hungry I have a slice while it's still warm and the chocolate is melting. I've also found that several days down the line you can microwave a slice and have it with vanilla ice cream for pudding. The rum taste seems to diminish over a few days, so it may be worth splashing your slice with neat rum if you want more of a boozy kick.  

Enjoy my fellow foodies x

P.S. Despite a possible hypo-manic incident this morning (is waking up at 5am and cleaning the kitchen, studying and researching a last-minute trip abroad before 6am normal?) my mood seems to be holding up okay. Thank the Lord.  First day back to work tomorrow. Fingers crossed it all goes well (for me and my patients!)