Black Banana Cake

It's not Monday, but it feels like a 'black' day anyway. The sky is dull with swooshes of deep grey interspersed with teeny tiny touches of barely blue. I'm feeling dull and things don't seem very perky at the moment. 

The bananas in the fruit basket didn't look very encouraging either. A little too soft and speckled for eating. So, I rummaged through my stack of recipe books for the usual never-fail Banana Cake. The abundance of bananas however, led me to look for another, and I came across a rather interesting looking Black Banana Cake from dear old Nigel. 

It promised to be a sweet, hazelnut-ty, banana-ey, chocolate chip speckled delight - a sort-of Nutella-crossed banana cake. Well, it certainly delivered... YUM!

BLACK BANANA CAKE

Adapted from Nigel Slater

175g salted Butter, softened

175g Light Brown Sugar

75g Ground Hazelnuts

2 Eggs

175g Self-Raising Flour

2 ripe Bananas

1/4 teaspoon Vanilla Essence

175g Bittersweet Chocolate Chips

Preheat the oven at 140 Celsius. Butter and line the base and sides of a loaf tin with baking paper.

Cream Butter and Sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy.

Add in the Eggs one by one beating well after each addition. Mix in the Vanilla Essence.

With a spatula, gently fold in the Self-Raising Flour and Ground Hazelnuts until just combined. 

Peel and mash the Bananas roughly. Fold this into the batter gently and finally add the Chocolate Chips.

Scrape batter into the prepared tin and bake for at 150 Celsius for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until a skewer poked through the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

Leave the cake in the tin for about 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. 

Nigel Slater's Very Good Chocolate Brownies

I had lots of chocolate on hand, so armed with an article from the Guardian UK I tried Nigel's recipe for Very Good Chocolate Brownies.

The ingredients are the usual suspects which go into most brownies i.e. butter, sugar, chocolate, some cocoa, eggs and strangely baking powder. The method, however, is different. The recipe requires you to cream the butter and sugar till light fluffy first, then beat in the eggs followed by folding in of the chocolate and subsequently the dry ingredients. I added a dash of vanilla because that's what I like, though this is essentially supposed to be a no vanilla brownie.

The result? A really light crumbly brownie that melts on your tongue. There is no other way to describe it. While the flavour is spot on, I'm not sure I like the texture. My chocolate heart tells me that brownies should be denser and slightly chewy. Also too much work for such a simple delight. I'd be happier being able to whip a batch of brownies that required one to melt the butter, mix everything up in just one saucepan and be ready for the oven in 15 minutes flat.

Please follow the link for the full recipe of Nigel Slater's Very Good Chocolate Brownies. What I have written out here is a much abreviated version of it.

VERY GOOD CHOCOLATE BROWNIES

300g Caster Sugar

250g Butter, softened

250 Chocolate, of which 200g is to be melted and the remainder 50g chopped into pieces

3 Whole Eggs and 1 Egg Yolk, lightly beaten with fork

60g Plain Flour

1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder

60 Cocoa Powder

Dash of Vanilla

Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius. Line a 10 inch x 10 inch square tin with foil. Set aside.

Cream Butter and Sugar until light and fluffy. With the mixer still running add in the Egg bit by bit taking care that all the Egg mixture is well combined with the Butter and Sugar. Fold in melted Chocolate. Fold in Plain Flour, Baking and Cocoa Powders. Fold in Chocolate pieces.

Scrape mixture into prepared tin and bake for 20 - 30 minutes. At 20-minute mark, poke skewer through the middle. It should come out with slightly wet batter sticking to it. Remove from oven. If still very liquid, leave until the 30-minute mark and test again. It should not take more than 30 minutes to bake.

Leave to cool completely in tin before cutting into squares.