All posts tagged: bake

Maple, Banana & Dark Chocolate Tray Cake

You will never need another banana cake recipe once you have tried this. It’s so easy rustle up and is the perfect way to get rid of the bananas browning in your fruit bowl. The finished result is a sticky sweet banana bread that’s still spongy and light, perfect served hot with ice cream or custard, or enjoy cold with a cup of tea. 130g butter, softened 100g golden caster sugar, plus extra for dusting 2 medium eggs 3 medium ripe bananas, well mashed or pureed using a hand blender 45 ml milk 1 tsp vanilla bean extract 100g dark chocolate, broken into small chunks 1 tsp cinnamon 250g self-raising flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 pinch of salt 3 tbsp maple syrup   Preheat your oven to 180C and butter a small deep baking tray. Using a wooden spoon, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Now crack in the eggs, add the mashed/pureed banana, milk and vanilla extract and beat until until smooth. Into the wet mix pour the chocolate chunks, …

Cooking with matcha

I have recently rekindled my love of green tea after discovering matcha – a powdered green tea made from specially selected green tea plants, which are shade grown for a few weeks before being ground up. The result is a clean, smooth-tasting tea that doesn’t have that horribly bitter after taste that first put me off regular green. It’s really easy to drink and has helped me through many a starvation lull on one of my fast days, as i’m currently trialing out the intermittent fasting (or the fast diet) in an attempt to (pun-alert) have my cake and eat it too (sorry.) But I’m more interested in matcha being used as an ingredient in cooking. The first time I tasted matcha was in a life changing dessert at So Japanese, Soho. This place was recommended to me by an ex colleague for its unbeatable sushi (and at a reasonable price for sushi) but I would also highly recommend the Japanese desserts. The Matcha & White Chocolate Cake with Black Sesame Ice Cream & Fruit Mousse   This was ordered …