Nigella’s Banana Cake. Wondefully adaptable.

Everyone should have a good banana cake recipe for aging fruit bowls.   I have relied on Nigella’s for years, mainly because it is delicious and wonderfully forgiving.  For example....if you have run out of caster sugar - brown sugar works fine; or walnuts - banana chips or chocolate chips are just as good; rum – orange juice and tea was delicious; or even bananas - a mix of bananas and nectarines was incredible.

Ingredients

100 g sultanas

75 ml dark rum

175 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

125 g unsalted butter, melted

150 g caster sugar

2 large free-range eggs

4 small ripe bananas (300 g of unpeeled banana), mashed

60 g walnuts, chopped

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Heat the oven to 170C.

2. Put the sultanas and rum in a saucepan and bring to the boil.  Remove from the heat, cover and all it to sit for an hour or more, until the sultanas have absorbed most of the liquid.  Drain.

3. Put the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a bowl.

4. In a large bowl mix the melted butter and sugar together until blended.  Beat in the eggs one at a time then add the mashed bananas, walnuts, sultanas and vanilla extract.

5. Add the flour to the banana mixture a third at a time, mixing well after each addition.

6. Butter a 23 cm x 13 cm x 7 cm loaf tin and sprinkle flour over the inside.  Scrape the mixture into the tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1 to 1 ¼ hours.  It is ready when a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out cleanish and the cake has started to come away from the edges of the tin.

7. Leave the cake in the tin on a cooling rack until cold, then turn out and serve.

It is such a fab one, it stays moist and delicious for days and like all my favourite cakes was completely wonderful at 6 am with a thermos of coffee (while we were looking at millions of buffalo)!