Bananarama cake

Choc-full of banana’s is this cake!

A funny thing happened at the grocer yesterday.

Bananas are a real treat for me as I don’t eat them very often and I was hankering for a nice ripe banana to eat.  I was craving a perfect sliced banana on toast and was at the local vege shop looking for a ripe, not too hard, banana to buy. Just one. For me. My husband always buys them very green and likes them with a green tinge, which is great for his gut but not for mine!

When cooking banana cake, I often ask the greengrocer if there are any manky bananas ‘out the back’ for cooking. You know, the ones that are not saleable anymore, and am delighted when I am given a few destined for the bin. The blacker, ‘mankier’, squishier bananas make the best cake. They have a higher sugar content and lower starch content.

But today I was looking for a banana to eat, rather than cook with and the ‘A grade’ bananas were a bit too green for me. They did have some ‘C grade’ bananas being sold by the 2 kilo bucket but I only wanted a single one.

So I grabbed one of these said bananas and headed to the checkout before where,  I was accosted by a staff member.

“You can’t just buy a single banana out of the buckets for the discounted price” he explained.

“That’s OK, I’m happy to pay the ‘A grade’ price for this banana” I replied.

“Are you crazy?” he said. “That one banana at the full price will cost the same as a whole kilo of the cheap ones”

To which I replied “I’m happy with that, I don’t eat bananas very often, and would prefer to pay more for a banana that I can enjoy today, rather than buy 2 kilos of bananas that I am unlikely to use”. And I didn’t want to freeze them as I don’t need any reason to make banana cake at the moment.

And the man stood there. And blocked my way. And just wouldn’t allow me to buy a single banana at top dollar and have me ‘waste” my money. In my mind, I wasn’t wasting my money at all, I just did not want to be sucked into the consumerism of buying something that I didn’t need just because it was on special! Goodness, my husband would have been so proud of me!

So out I walked with 2 FRIGGIN’ kilos of ripe ambrosial bananas under my arm for a dollar. As if I needed any excuse to make another banana cake!! That’s the end of my story.

Should you find yourself with a glut of ripe bananas that your husband & kids won’t eat, make this cake. It uses 500g ripe bananas and not much else! It has no added sugar, refined or otherwise and the stevia is purely optional – I don’t use it. You can make it with either coconut flour or buckwheat/almonds. Both work perfectly well but I prefer the buckwheat/almond version better.

500g banana flesh

120g raw almonds

50g buckwheat

3 eggs

140g nut butter

100g butter or coconut oil

2 teas baking powder

1/2 teas salt

stevia (optional)

 

Grind the buckwheat on SP 9 for 10 seconds. Add the almonds and mill a further 10 seconds until fine. Add the baking powder, cinnamon and salt and give the mix a whiz to combine.

 

Add the bananas, eggs, nut butter, butter and blend on SP 6 until smooth. Pour into a loaf tin and bake at 170°C for approximately 35 minutes. Cool before slicing and serve with lashings of butter!

 

Alternative Coconut flour version:

500g banana flesh

70g coconut flour

4 eggs

140g nut butter

100g butter or coconut oil

2 teas baking powder

1/2 teas salt

stevia (optional)

 

Method is as above but  no grinding required!