David Lebowitz once again proved he writes a mean recipe. This time though I ended up disagreeing
with him slightly.
The cake was a breeze to make. I decided to mash the bananas with a fork but they weren’t quite
ripe enough. That left them a little lumpy. To try and make it a little smoother I passed the lot
through a sieve. That was a pretty poor plan. Be advised that banana will not easily be removed from
those tiny holes!
Everything else went well though and the (very tasty) batter made its way into the pan and into
the oven. I didn’t have a square pan of the right size so I baked it round. This was the first time I’d
baked a cake in this new oven. There’s a main oven and a smaller top oven. Both are electric which
is something I haven’t baked with much before. I decided, in a bid to cut down on energy use, to use
the top oven.
The news was mixed. On the one hand I pulled it out when David said and, unlike with my old oven,
it was perfectly cooked and didn’t need any additional time. On the down side there’s clearly pretty
uneven heating in the top oven so it wasn’t uniformly browned. Some of the delicious syrup had also
bubbled over and burnt onto the bottom of the oven. I’ll know to use the main oven from now on
for baking.
Minor mishaps aside this recipe was a triumph. The cake was moist and rich. You certainly wouldn’t
have known it was relatively low fat. I took slices to my new neighbours and new colleagues. I’ve
spent the days since being stopped by people and told how delicious it was. I really was too. I said I
had one minor disagreement with Mr Lebowitz. He said the cake was best warm on the day it was
made. I found the taste was significantly better the one or two days after baking (it didn’t last any
longer than that, who knows it could have got better still). If you weren’t careful I suppose it could
dry out in that time but I had it well packaged. I can heartily recommend it anyway. Whichever day
you choose to eat it it will be delicious!
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