Dark Banana Ginger Cake

I feel as if I should apologise for three consecutive posts featuring loaves, but they are so practical now that I'm only baking for myself. Even with a small loaf cake, I often freeze part of it - mainly to save my waistline, not because I couldn't eat it all. Loaf shaped cakes are easy to portion and stack tidily in the freezer. In this case, I was able to bake this full-sized recipe (the second on the page) from the ever reliable Dan Lepard, but split it between two small loaf tins rather than bake it as one large 20cm (8") square cake. The cooking time for the smaller loaves was still 50 minutes.

I made a few changes to the recipe, some of which seemed inconsequential to how well the recipe worked - I used white bread flour, crystallised ginger instead of glacé, and added some ground spices to the recipe (1 teaspoon ginger and 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice). The final change was a bit more worrying - I only had two large bananas, which I was reasonably sure would weigh enough, but when the peel was off there was only 200g of flesh, not the 300g asked for in the recipe.

It was too late to back out at that stage so I went ahead, wondering if I needed to add anything to replace the missing 100g of banana. If the batter had been really thick, I might have added a tablespoon or two of natural yogurt, but it was very liquid, so I decided to go ahead with nothing else added.  I noticed afterwards that Dan says in the introduction to the recipe that the bran in wholemeal flour soaks up the liquid from the mashed banana, so maybe losing the bran and using less banana cancelled each other out!

I really liked this cake, it was firm and close textured but not heavy, and it still smelled and tasted of banana. I think adding a little extra spice was a good idea as even though I was using fiery crystallised ginger pieces it was nice to have some spice flavour in the cake crumb too.

Molasses and Coconut Rum Cake

I'm so glad I decided to bake this Molasses and Coconut Rum Cake, even though it was too big for me, and I had to freeze half of it in slices. It's the best cake I've tasted for a long time!

The recipe, from the ever reliable and inventive Dan Lepard, popped up on my Facebook feed recently, as I follow the Australian Good Food site. A lot of the recipes there aren't immediately relevant, as the seasons are reversed, but a lot of cake recipes, like this one, aren't seasonal anyway.

As is often the case with Dan, the recipe has a slightly unusual method - it wasn't difficult, but there were one or two points worth remembering for next time. The recipe says to heat the sugar and molasses (I used black treacle) together until any lumps of sugar have softened, but not to boil the mixture. The butter is then melted in the warm sugar. I don't think I heated the sugar enough, as when it was tipped into my mixing bowl a layer set on the bottom, which was really difficult to mix back in, and the butter, which I had cut into small cubes, only just melted. Better to have a little more heat, I think, then wait for the sugar and butter mixture to cool a little, if necessary, before going on to the next stage of adding the eggs, so that the excess heat doesn't cook the eggs.

I used a 900g (2lb) loaf tin, which made a more shallow cake than the one shown with the recipe, but a 450g (1lb) tin would have been too small, and we don't have an in-between size in the UK, as far as I'm aware.

I added about 3 tablespoons of rum to the cake - all there was left in the bottle - and it soaked in easily. I'd probably add a bit more next time, as the flavour wasn't as strong as I'd expected.

Because I was going to freeze part of the cake, I didn't make the frosting. I don't often add frostings to everyday cakes, but I think I'd add one if I made this for a special occasion - and the cake is certainly good enough for that!

There was a relatively large amount of desiccated coconut in this recipe, compared to traditional British coconut cake recipes, but it was almost overwhelmed by the stronger flavours of the black treacle and the spices. The texture of the cake was soft but not too sponge-like; in some ways it was more like a gingerbread than a coconut cake, although it didn't get a sticky top when stored.

This is definitely a recipe to repeat!