Butterscotch banana loaf cake

Several nights ago I found myself watching ‘Louie’, Louis CK’s show. It was the one where he calls the grocers and orders, among other items, 6 bananas that are misheard as 60 hence he ends up with a lot of bananas. Totally not the point of the show but it got me thinking what I’d do had a large bunch of bananas landed in my kitchen. Little did I know what the cosmos had planned.

For several days now a winter/ tropical storm is bringing out my crave for winter foods and so far soups, casseroles, hot pots and baked apple cakes have already made an appearance in the kitchen and on my plate. The next morning I headed to the farmers market and without a banana thought in my head. Thats not strictly true, secretly I was hoping to find a rare bunch of ripe bananas among the green bunches always sold and as luck would have it I passed by a glowing stand radiating with bright yellow, some would say over ripe bananas past their best days. Perfect for baking, I thought.

At half the price I bought the lot and found myself standing in the kitchen surrounded with quite a few bananas. Whether it was a hunch, intuition, quantum physics or simply a coincidence, I had prepared in advance and had given the subject a little thought. So some I mashed, zip locked and froze for future use, some have now been transformed into a jam, now jarred, and some ended up in a Butterscotch banana cake that I like to refer to as ‘how I like to start the weekend’ cake.

The recipe for this cake was taken from Dan Lepard's latest cookbook.

A food columnist on The Guardian’s food channel, his latest cookbook arrived at my doorstep earlier this week and it’s a hefty one. With over 500 pages featuring hundreds of recipes from sweet to savoury, breads, cakes, tarts, candies and desserts it took me several hours to go over it and dress it up with technicolor ribbons marking all the ‘must bake’ recipes.

Turns out over- ripe bananas was just the place to start. And you never know which bananas tomorrow will bring.

Butterscotch banana loaf cake

Adapted from ‘Short & sweet: The best of home baking',

by Dan Lepard.

This cake begins caramelizing bananas before adding the sticky mixture to the batter. The result is a moist spicy banana toffee loaf that’s light and mildly sweet and pairs wonderfully with a cup of coffee, dunked in a bowl of custard or served with a dollop of sour cream.

For the butterscotch bananas:

2/3 caster sugar

50 ml water

2 bananas, sliced thickly

1-2 tbs unsalted butter

2 tsp vanilla extract or ½ vanilla stick, deseeded

a pinch of sea salt

for the cake:

½ cup caster sugar

¾ cup virgin coconut oil (or any other neutral flavoured oil)

3 medium eggs

50 g plain yogurt

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup rye flour (of wholemeal/ spelt)

2 tsp of mixed spice ( I prepared a mixture freshly ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, Kampot and Melegueta pepper)

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1. For the butterscotch bananas: pour the sugar and water in a large frying pan and bring to a boil. Continue to cook until the liquid turns to a rich caramel colour. Reduce the heat and add the bananas, butter and vanilla. Cook the bananas in the sauce until they’ve softened. Sprinkle the sea salt then set aside and allow to cool.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf pan with parchment paper.
3. In a bowl, sift the flour, rye flour, mixed spice, baking powder and baking soda.
4. In a separate large bowl mix the sugar, oil and eggs to a thick, yellow batter.
5. Add the caramelized bananas and yogurt and mix well.
6. Fold the flour mixture into the batter, not too much, just until incorporated.
7. Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for about 40 minutes. The cake is ready when it turns a tanned caramel colour and a skewer inserted into it comes out clean.
8. Release the cake from the pan and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Swedish Apple Cake

I’ve had this recipe filed in the “must bake’ bookmark ever and today was the day I finally baked it.

Halloween is coming up and despite my attempts to do something with a pumpkin its simly not in my blood, probably because it is a non existent holiday on this part of the world and , well, the heat waves are confusing any notion of fall. If it weren’t for the apples, pumpkins and citrus fruit that began appearing in the market, I’d be lost.

I don’t recall what it was about this cake that caught my eye. I think it was it its pure simplicity and my affection for anything Nordic. You see, its Swedish, and Sweden can get quite cold. Quick and easy to bake it is not a flashy cake pregnant with failed promises, but is instead succulent and moist, naïve and pure in its plainness. And it filled my house with the warm air of a home.

It is one of those cakes that become a staple, a comfort, and I cant stop thinking about a slice sitting cosily inside a bowl of warm custard.

Swedish apple cake

This recipe is adapted from Allegra McEvedy’s Swedish apple that appeared here.

3 eggs

¾ cup unrefined cane sugar

2 cups flour

1½tsp baking powder

200g Sour cream

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and cut into bite-sized chunks

¼ tsp cinnamon

Pre-heat the oven to 175ºC.

Whisk the eggs and sugar until it is thick and pale.

Sift in the flour and baking powder, folding t gently until it is all combined.

Fold the sour cream into the mixture.

Fold the cinnamon and diced apples into the mix until it is all combined.

You can brush the top with melted butter and sprinkle liberally with golden granulated sugar and some cinnamon (I added cinnamon sugar I bought on my last trip to the Netherlands).

Grease a 20cm cake tin with a knob of butter, then pour the batter in.

Bake in the oven for 40-50 minutes, then take it out and leave to cool in the pan for 10 minutes.

Run a knife around the edge and turn out on to a plate, then flip again so the apples are on top.

Serve hot or at room temperature, as is or with a dollop of crème fraiche or vanilla ice cream.

For variations, try adding freshly ground mace, cardamon, chunks of candied ginger or apricot, raisin or chopped walnuts to the mixture for your personal signature apple cake.

Sour cream fig coffee cake

September is not an easy month. After a long, hard and humid summer it would only make sense to take this time to regenerate, recuperate, gather strength and the last of the summer fruit in preparation for a yearned winter.

I am, however, trying not to get my hopes high considering last year I turned the heating once and once only.

Instead, September is host to no less then 4 different holidays, full of meaning and symbolism, family orientated (a challenge in itself) and revolve around food, or the lack of.

So far, its 1 down and 3 to go. The New Year celebrations are finally over and Yom Kippur is in store for the nether part of the week. Traditionally this is a day for internal contemplation, fasting and solitude. No cars, no shops, no restaurants, no TV. Nothing. It’s wonderful. Everything is quiet. Instead of cars the roads are filled with pedestrians and bicycles. Car engines hibernate for the day making way for street cats to take over the tarmac territory and forgotten urban aromas to get noticed in the air.

Riding a bicycle is traditional, watching movies back to back and picking up unfinished books.

With nowhere to go and hours at home, contemplating I clean my slate for the coming year in the kitchen.

Not traditional and perhaps controversial, but I contemplate around food.

On second thought a day with no computers, work and other distractions could do me good. A day of no food; no cooking, no eating, no writing and no thinking of food could be good. Equipped with good books, a dead serious British drama and the company of good friends, I look forward to this fast and welcoming a new year with a clean slate.

With the last of the figs for this season nothing like a sour cream fig coffee cake. For starting over with a new slate.

Sour cream fig coffee cake

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients

4 ripe figs, washed and diced + 1 fig, sliced

¾ cup all purpose flour

¼ cup chestnut flour (alternatively, you can use 1 cup AP flour)

¼ Tsp baking powder

¼ Tsp baking soda

¼ Tsp fine sea salt

1/3 cup sour cream

1/8 Tsp almond extract

90gr unsalted butter, room temperature

¾ cup cane sugar

1 egg

1/8 Tsp cinnamon

Fresh thyme leaves (optional)

Preheat the oven to 175C

In a large bowl sift together the flours, baking powder and the baking soda. Add the sea salt.

In a separate, small bowl mix together the sour cream with the almond extract and the diced figs.

In another bowl beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.

Beat in egg until combined, add the cinnamon and alternating between them, add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture until just combined.

Transfer the batter to loaf pan, smoothing the top.

arrange the fig slices on top and sprinkle with a little cinnamon.

Bake until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean and top is golden brown, about 30 minutes.

Cool cake in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then invert onto rack.

Sprinkle with fresh thyme leaves and serve.

Apricot cardamon sour cream cake

Summer is almost here. Then again, oh no, its almost summer! There is a fine line between a pleasant warm sun and a scorching heat drenched in an underwhelming humidity. This fine line is right now. Right here. I suppose I can mark it as apricot season. Barely a transition season, blink and its gone.

I had to hurry writing a newspaper column about it. Its always the case with apricots; the rush, the hurry to get to it and make the most of it. This year apricot season coincided with a visit to London. That’s me hanging on to some overcast, cloudiness with a possible chance of precipitation.

The day I made all the apricot dishes for the article had put a lid on my desire for apricots until next season. The general theme was, seasonally, expressive of both apricots as well as my anticipated visit to London, accounting for the apricots, walnuts and stilton salad as well as the colonial flavours of apricots, cardamon and yogurt in a local adaptation of Eaton mess. that right.

In addition to compote and several jars of preserves I simply had to bake an apricot cake. Needless to say dinner was many, many apricots. I can now travel in peace, knowing I had made use of the short apricot season. Should there be any left on my return, well, that’s just bonus.

Apricot cardamon sour cream cake

6 Ripe apricots, stoned and halved

3 cardamon pods, ground


1/2 cup caster sugar


100g unsalted butter at room temperature


2 Tsp dried or candied orange peel, chopped


1 egg


200 ml sour cream


1/4 cup semolina


1/2 plain flour


1 tsp baking powder


8 ripe apricots, stoned and diced

preheat the oven to 180C and butter a loaf pan.

Scatter the apricot halves, cut side facing down, over the base of the pan to cover it completely, and then sprinkle over the ground cardamon and a tablespoon of the sugar.

In a bowl beat the butter until soft and creamy. Add the remaining sugar in a steady stream until the mixture increases in volume and lightens to pale yellow. It should look light, fluffy, and creamy.

Add the chopped orange peel and beat in the egg until just combined.

Beat in the sour cream until just combined.

Stir in the semolina, sift in the flour and baking powder, and fold through.

Lightly fold in the diced apricot cubes through the mixture.

Spoon the batter over the apricot halves and bake for 50-60 minutes, until a skewer poked in comes out almost clean.

Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then flip over on to a plate.

Allow to cool before serving.

The cake can be stored, well wrapped, in the refrigerator for several days.