Chocolate and Banana Cake

Ingredients:

1 Cup light brown sugar

1 ¾ Cups of cake flour

¾ Cup of Cocoa

1 ½ teaspoon of baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda (Baking soda for Americans)

half a teaspoon of salt

2 large eggs

1 cup very ripe bananas, mashed smooth with a fork

1 cup warm water

½ cup milk

½ cup cooking oil

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla essence

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 Degrees C, make sure the rack is placed in the middle of the oven.

Grease, line and flour a 23 x 33cm cake tin, or 2 smaller tins if you’d prefer to make a layered cake (remember to adjust cooking time if you are using 2 tins).

Sieve all the dry ingredients into a large bowl.

In a second bowl, whisk the eggs, then beat in the mashed bananas, followed by the rest of the wet ingredients. Make sure they are well mixed together before adding them to the dry ingredients.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients; slowly pour in the wet ingredients while beating. Make sure the mixture is smooth and well beaten.

Pour the mixture into your prepared tins.

If you are making one cake, bake for 35 to 40 minutes. If you have divided the mixture between two tins, bake for 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Leave the cake in the tin for 5 minutes to cool slightly, before removing from the tins and allowing it to cool completely before icing.

To finish the cake: You can make a delicious butter icing, using softened butter, beaten until smooth, then add 1 teaspoon vanilla essence, and keep adding sifted cocoa and icing sugar to taste. Or just dust the top of the cake with a light layer of icing sugar.

The original recipe comes from a website called joyofbaking.com, with a few minor adaptations.