Mini Banana Cakes with lemon cream cheese icing

I have been making this banana cake recipe for years, and before I was making it my mum was. Not sure where she got this recipe, but it’s a winner :-).

There is something quite nostalgic when you make a recipe that you grew up eating as a child, it invokes memories and feelings, it’s what we call comfort food.

This banana cake is moist and soft the only important thing in making this recipe is make sure you have very ripe bananas, the riper the better.

RECIPE for Banana cake:

• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• 165g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 medium bananas
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 260g Self Raising Flour, sifted
• 1/2 tsp bi-carbonate soda
• 2 Tsp milk

METHOD:

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC
2. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs 1 at a time beating well between each addition
4. Mash bananas, then beat in with vanilla
5. Fold in half the sifted flour and bicarbonate soda, add milk, then fold in remaining flour. (try not to work batter too much at this will make for a tough cake, as you over work the gluten in the flour)
6. place batter into prepared cake pan(s) (I used mini loaf tins, but you can one big cake or cupcakes or 1 large loaf cake)
7. bake in oven until skewer comes out clean when inserted into centre, (cooking times will vary depending on the size of your cake, the bigger the cake the longer it will take. My mini loaf cakes took about 20-25 minutes)

RECIPE lemon cream cheese icing:

• 250g cream cheese, softened
• 80g unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups pure icing sugar, sifted
• Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated

METHOD:

1. Cream butter and cream cheese together until soft and smooth
2. add icing sugar and lemon zest, mix to combine
3. spread generously on top of banana cake(s) and decorate as desired

Hamburger cake and biscuit fries

Well another week has been gone by, time goes so quickly……

This week it was my youngest son Alex’s 9th birthday, I can’t believe my baby has turned 9. So exciting to watch them grow, but I wish I could slow it down just a little!!!!!! I remember when I had my first son Aden and so many people said to me, enjoy every second because it will be gone before you know it, man they weren’t kidding……………..

So of course birthday means, birthday cake. I love making the kids birthday cakes some years they pick what they want and other years I surprise them. This year it was a surprise for Alex, one of Alex’s favourite foods is hamburgers, and I have seen some great hamburger cakes on the internet, So it was a hamburger cake and biscuit fries for Alex this year.

The look on his face when he saw his cake was priceless, that look alone was enough for all the hours I spent baking and decorating. Big eyes, a big smile and a big hug what else could a mum possibly ask for.

I didn’t really follow a recipe to create this cake, I basically made two butter cakes and one chocolate cake, the chocolate cake being for the meat patty. I used plastic icing, red for the tomatoes cut into circles and yellow for the cheese, cut into squares. For the lettuce I used butter cream coloured green, which I piped on. I then covered the butter cake in a light brown icing to make the burger roll I had two shades of the brown butter cream to add some depth. once iced I sprinkled with sesame seeds.

To make the biscuit fries, I made a simple short bread which I rolled out into squares and then scored in some straight lines the width I wanted my fries to be. I brushed with egg white and sprinkled with raw sugar, then baked. Once cooled I cut along the score lines to create my fries.