Banana Cake & Passionfruit Cream Cheese Icing

A simple recipe to get us through the middle of the week. Hands up who likes banana cake?! Or banana bread? Let's face it, banana bread is banana cake. I remember my first semester of uni, where every early morning physics lectures was preceeded by a huge mocha and a piece of toasted banana bread slathered with butter. I can't believe what a fatty I was. These days I still indulge in banana bread every now and then (without the copious amounts of butter), and whenever I feel like banana cake at home I always turn to my trusty Stephanie Alexander recipe from The Cook's Companion.

I've decided to add this recipe to the 'Foolproof' category, because it has never failed me no matter how many times I have done it, and no matter what kind of weird things I add to it. This time I happened to make it for Simon's birthday picnic, pairing it with this amazing passionfruit cream cheese icing which I've whipped up a couple times. Banana cake with passionfruit is a winner of a combination that I first tried years ago thanks to a birthday cake we bought my Mum from Simmone Logue, it beats plain cream cheese icing any day. I decided to keep it simple for Simon's picnic, mostly because I was super lazy, so I split the batter into half and baked them as thin cake slices rather than a full sized cake and slathered the top with the icing. Unfortunately for my poor cake was not prepared for the intensely humid 40+ degree weather at centennial park that day, and it pretty much collapsed on itself. I think the moisture from the cream cheese seeped into the cake, turning it into mush. Taking it home and refrigerating it didn't help, the whole thing went a bit strange textured. So I guess this cake is foolproof until you decide to spend the afternoon in oven-like conditions! But don't let my bad luck deter you, this cake is normally super moist and packed full of banana flavoured goodness.

Foolproof Banana Cake with Passionfruit Cream Cheese Icing
(Simple banana cake recipe from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion)
For the banana cake:
125g softened unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe banana (approx 2 large bananas or 2-3 medium bananas)
few drops pure vanilla
250g plain flour
1tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2cup milk + 1 tsp lemon juice)

For the passionfruit cream cheese icing:
250g cream cheese, softened
1/4 lemon, juiced
75g icing sugar
125g unsalted butter, melted
3 passionfruit

Butter and flour a 20 cm square cake tin then line the base with baking paper (or two if you want to make thin cake slices rather than a full cake). Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Bean in eggs, banana and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients and add to mixture, alternating with buttermilk. Spoon into tin and bake for 45 minutes or until cake tests clean. Cool cake in its tin on a wire rack for a few minutes before turning out.

Place cream cheese in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Sift icing sugar into bowl. Add butter & lemon juice and then beat together until well combined. The mixture should be quite shiny. Add pulp from passionfruit to the icing and fold to combine. Spread liberally over the cooled banana cake. Can be stored in the refrigerator in an air tight container.

Foolproof Chocolate Chip Cookies

You need a foolproof chocolate chip cookie recipe just as much as you need a foolproof cupcake recipe. In case you can't already tell, I adore cookies. There's something really great about the shareability of cookies. And they are so darn addictive! This can be good, or really bad if you're trying to be healthy. I regularly whip up choc chip cookies with this super easy recipe that I have already shared with several workmates (this includes male engineers). They came back gushing about how easy the recipe was, so I can confidently assure you that this one is foolproof!

I believe this recipe comes from one of Bill Grainger's books. It was passed on to me from my brother and has been sitting in my email inbox for so long now that I can't quite remember which book it came from.

Foolproof Chocolate Chip Cookies

125g unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups tightly packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups chocolate bits

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and beat until light and creamy. Add vanilla and egg and stir to combine. Stir in the sifted flour, baking powder and salt until just combined. Fold through chocolate chips.

Place spoonfuls of cookie mixture on a lined baking tray, allowing room for spreading. For a crunchy cookie, they should be slightly flattened balls of about 3cm in diameter. For a larger, chewier cookie, about 4-5 cm. Beware! They spread out a lot, so keep them well separated or you'll end up with one big cookie. Cook for 15-20 minutes, until they turn pale gold. Allow to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before placing biscuits on a wire rack to cool further.

The chocolate that you choose for the chips doesn't really matter. Try to avoid the higher cocoa content chocolates (no more than 70%) because it can get a bit too bitter for the cookie. I've switched regular bittersweet chocolate for lindt mint chocolate, or even smarties! I've always wanted to try white chocolate...I think the next time I make them I will try some of that cinnamon white chocolate from NQN's hot cross bun recipe :) But since white chocolate is so much sweeter I would definitely lower the sugar in the recipe.

I usually prefer to make the smaller, crunchier cookies; it means there is more to share around! But the big ones are wonderfully chewy and moist too. These cookies are best enjoyed freshly baked and dipped in a cold glass of milk.

Foolproof Cupcake Recipe

This recipe is something that I hold very dear to my heart. I started baking cupcakes a few years ago and I know there is still plenty of room for improvement. Back then, I began with a simple vanilla cupcake recipe and then went through dozens of different internet and cookbook recipes. None every really turned out consistently the way I expected my cupcake to turn out. I wanted a moist, crumbly cake with a golden brown top. I had my fair share of disasters, and my family were subjected to many batches of dry pale white, floury, tasteless cakes. Poor things.

About half a year ago I finally came upon a recipe that worked well for me, no matter how lazy or careless I was. And it is SO EASY. It's adapted from an orange tea cake recipe from Stephanie Alexanders, 'The Cook's Companion', her recipes are always guaranteed to work brilliantly. I usually try to substitute the orange juice in this recipe with mandarin juice, as it helps give it that golden hue while adding hardly any citrus flavour, making it more of a yellow cake than an orange cake.

Plain Cupcakes
1/3 cup freshly squeezed mandarin (or orange) juice (Mandarin juice is preferable)
2 eggs
125g unsalted butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
225g self-raising flour (I usually make this by mixing plain flour and baking powder using the instructions on the baking powder pack if I don't have self-raising flour)
Optional: 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180C and line a cupcake tray with paper cases.
There are two options for preparation, either work just as well as the other. I don't have a food processor so I am forced to use the first but the original recipe uses the food processor.
Method 1:
Cream butter and sugar together using an electric beater until light and smooth. Add eggs at a time and beat in well. Add the juice and flour and quickly mix until combined, avoid overbeating the flour.

Method 2:
Combine all cake ingredients in a food processor and blend for 2 minutes.

Pour cake mixture in paper cases, filling them about half to two-thirds full. It's usually easiest to use a table spoon to scoop the batter and then drop it into your paper cases. It will take 15-20 minutes to bake. The top should be golden brown and slightly crunchy after it has cooled for a few minutes out of the oven. It is actually better to over-bake the cakes rather than under-bake to avoid that raw flour taste. Don't worry, it takes a lot to dry out this cake, so as long as it is not burnt, it will be fine.

From here, any variation in flavour and decoration is possible! You can't go wrong with whacking some vanilla butter cream and sprinkles on top, but when you get bored of that here are some other possibilities:

Blueberry Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Icing

Blueberry Cupcakes

This is my favourite variation on the plain cakes - i throw in half a pack of thawed and washed frozen blueberries or a full punnet of fresh blueberries. It takes the same amount of time to bake and makes the cakes super super moist.

Lemon Cream Cheese Icing

125g cream cheese (room temperature)
200g sifted icing sugar
a few teaspoons lemon juice
half a teaspoon of lemon zest

Beat cream cheese until slightly softened and then mix in icing sugar. Add lemon juice one teaspoon at a time, mixing it in well each time, until you have desired texture. I usually use about 2, I prefer my cupcake icing on the firmer side so it doesn't run off the top and gather at the edges of the paper. Add lemon zest and then spoon onto cupcakes!

Lemon Cream Cheese Icing

Another fantastic version I have attempted is ginger cupcakes with cinnamon sugar icing. Just add two teaspoons of ground ginger to the cake mixture, replace the caster sugar with brown sugar, top cakes with plain cream cheese or buttercream icing and sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top. I used raw sugar and a teaspoon of ground cinnamon.

Ginger cupcakes with cinnamon sugar topping

One that still needs improvement - chocolate cupcakes with mint icing. I added two tablespoons of unsweetened Dutch cocoa to the mixture which upset the dry-wet ratio and these turned out rather dry, even with the buttercream icing with a tsp of peppermint extract mixed in. I might try these again using melted chocolate instead of dry cocoa.