Baking with bananas is easy! Don’t throw those bananas away!

My children are royal pains in the butt when it comes to food, they will go through a phase of loving something, I will bulk buy it ( stupidly, I’ll admit !), and then they will have fallen out of love with the huge stash I have accumulated, the latest being a large bunch of bananas.

So slowly, I have had 8 bananas in my fridge doing the whole colour pallet effect from green to yellow to brown , and I refuse to chuck them, so when they looked a funky shade of WTF yesterday, I though I had better take action! I love baking with bananas as this can be done even if they look like they are on the turn!

When the Bananas are really soft they are often much sweeter and easier to mash, which make them a great ingredient for smoothies or cake, so after a huge Sunday roast, I served up this Banana and Coconut cake with Custard, which both the kids and Adults loved – all made from a little baking with bananas!

I tried a different method to my normal fool proof cake recipe and used a way of weighing the eggs and using the exact weight for the flour, sugar and butter, which actually produced a soft and moist cake (Thanks for the tip Mum !).

You will need…..

3 bananas

3 eggs

Self raising flour

Sugar

Butter

2 tsp coconut essence

Chocolate chips

Desiccated coconut

100g Bar of Chocolate ( LIDL 30p !! )

So after you have weighed out your ingredients, Melt the butter and add this to the sugar and mix well. Add the eggs, flour and coconut essence and have a good stir until all lumps have vanished, Add the bananas and mash them up with a fork, again mix this into the cake mix.

Add your chocolate chips, and pour the cake mix into a lined baking tin and cook in a pre heated oven (200*c)  for around 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean from the centre of the cake.

Remove the cake from the oven and leave for about 5 minutes before you turn It out from the tin. Leave the cake to cool for around half an hour and when it is just a little warm, start to melt your chocolate.

Place a bowl over a pan of water and place the chocolate and a chuck of butter into the bowl, Bring the water to the boil, and stir the chocolate when it starts to melt. When you have a lovely runny consistency, remove from the heat and pour this over the cake.

(Remember to hide the bowl from the children, so that you can indulge in front of Corrie later !)

I put the cake into the freezer, so that the chocolate goes hard quicker, as I normally have kids hanging of my shirt tails, asking me is it ready yet !

If you want to make a fancy design on the cake, be creative with some damp paper and use it as a stencil for your topping. ( I don’t get out much !)

And finally Enjoy ! X

If you like chocolate and coconut, check this out…...