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).
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| 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!)
