Banana Cake

The Country Women’s Association is a long established icon in Australia’s farming communities across the continent.  I was given the official CWA cookbook by one of my patients in Collarenebri. A real gift! Although the CWA is nowadays not as big as it once was there is no doubt that they are still very much respected for their ability to bake the perfect cakes, scones, biscuits and what have you.  This recipe from their book is great if you have a few over ripe banana’s or if you find yourself with a surplus bunch of bananas that you really have to get rid of, like we did when we got to the Victoria / South Australia boarder crossing with fruit that we were not allowed to take across.

I doubled the recipe just to get rid of more bananas. There were no complaints.

Ingredients:

2 tbs               Butter (30 gr)

1 cup              Sugar (220gr)

1                      egg beaten

3                      bananas, very ripe, mashed

1 ½ cup          flour (225 gr)

1 tsp               bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp               baking powder

2 tbs               milk

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl. Add 1 beaten egg and then add 1 banana at a time beating well. Mix in the flour, bicarb and baking powder.  Add 2 tbs milk.  Poor into a greased cake tin and bake at 180 C for 35-45 minutes.

Icing (optional):

Ingredients:

2 tsp               butter

1 tbs               cocoa powder

1 tbs               Strong coffee

½ tsp              vanilla essence

                        icing sugar

                        Walnuts

Method:

Melt the butter and stir in the cocoa powder, coffee and vanilla essence. Then add enough icing sugar to make a smooth, even spread.  Sprinkle with walnuts