Banana Cake (Not!)

I went down and saw a huge bunch of bananas and they were sweet, so I was thinking, why not make a banana cake. Got the recipe from Regina and modified it when I realized I lack some ingredients. Instead of all-purpose flour, I only had self-raising flour. So I decided not to add the bicarbonate soda and baking powder as I thought it was already included in the flour. Turned out it only contained baking soda and not both as I thought.

I saw it needed 2 cups of sugar and was horrified. I hate having too much sugar, so I added more bananas (5 instead of 3) and reduced the sugar to 11/2 cups. So there I was, happily mashing the bananas and beating the batter.

Mashed bananas

Batter

I thought the batter might overflow when it is baking, so I transferred some to the muffin pan and a loaf pan.

So I was all set, I realized I do not have 175C in my microwave oven (which doubles up as a convection oven or grill too), so I had the temperature on 180C but reduce the time to 45mins. Disaster struck 25 mins later. My beautiful banana cake was burnt to a crisp!

My mom said she saw it rose beautifully earlier, but as it wasn't time to take it out, she let it be. But a few minutes later, there was a burning smell and the cake shrunk and flattened and hardened. Sob sob. Now where was I? I was in the shower, so I couldn't rescue the cake :(

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It was sad and bad, so bad that it was even black inside. And it was hard, rock hard - wish my abs were like that - ok, first trial is a failure. Onto the second try. The muffin. I added walnuts to make banana walnuts muffins. I reduced the heat to 70C for 10mins. Didn't work, still too soft. In the end, I had it for 10mins at 160C, and an additional 5 mins at 180C. It turned out golden, not too brown. It looked fine, but the taste is another matter. Not very sweet, which is good, but it felt too dense and sticky.

So for the last test, I added more milk to the banana loaf. It turned out well, less sticky, but still a bit dense, similar to scone texture, but less fluffy. So I conclude, it must be the flour.

Lesson learnt: Always follow the recipe for 1st attempt and then modified after that.