Almost Perfect Banana Cake

My ex-colleagues will never believe this, but I don't believe that things need to be perfect. Oh, and I can already hear them protesting.. and insisting I am such a perfectionist.

Well, I can only say that at work, I kind of have a higher standard and more lofty expectations.. but apart from work, I am contented and happy with having things being less than perfect.

Yesterday, I set out to make a butter cake again, since I forgot about the photos the last time around. But I had 2 bananas that were going quite brown, so I decided to "change" the recipe a little and make a banana cake instead.

Ingredients
2 large bananas
3 tbsp milk
3 large eggs
1.5 tsp vanilla
120g sugar (I used vanilla sugar. The recipe called for 150g but I used a little less, since I thought that the bananas would already have a bit of sweetness in them)
150g butter (The butter cake recipe called for 184g, I used less again, cos of the bananas)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
140g cake flour

What I did
1. In a medium bowl, combine the milk, eggs and vanilla
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, add butter and banana and half the egg mixture
3. Beat at low speed for about 20s, then medium speed for 1min
4. Add the remaining egg mixture in 2 batches, beating 20s after each addition
5. Bake in preheated oven of 170 deg C with a rectangular loaf pan (8" by 4" by 2.5") for about 55 to 65 mins. I didn't have such a pan, so I used an 8" by 8" square cake pan and baked for about 40-45 mins. My cake turned out to be quite thin because of the size of the pan I used.

Here's a picture of my cake.


I was really pleased with how it turned out, since I've never made a banana cake before and there isn't such a recipe in the Cake Bible. But it really turned out quite ok, since my mum, who is usually really quite fussy told my sister that it was a really nice cake. Fragrant, moist and nicely sticky on top.

"Just a tad too sweet" she said. So the next time, I'd try using only 100g of sugar.