I had been looking at this recipe for a long time, but as I\’ve mentioned, I\’m not much of a baker. Enter quarantine and I have plenty of time to hone my skills.

This comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, Warm Bread and Honey Cake by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra. Her recipes reflect the heritage of her homeland of Guyana and her current home in the Netherlands. It\’s really a special book. 

A few things I learned when making this cake. Firstly, the recipe was vastly more accurate when I weighed the ingredients. Example, I found that 9 oz of AP flour was much more than 1 2/3 cups. My friends who are accomplished bakers say to always weigh if possible. I have tried to adjust the recipe to reflect this, but weighing would really be best.

Secondly, the recipe calls for 35-40 minutes cooking time, but I found in my oven it needed a full 50 minutes. 

Lastly, in the original recipe, she did not call for allowing the cake to rest before turning it out of the pan. I waited 15 minutes and it came out perfectly.

Equipment: 8 inch square pan. I think a normal circular cake pan would work as well, as long as its a similar size.

Ingredients

10 1/2 oz very ripe Bananas, or 2 large or 4 medium
Juice of 1/2 Lime
9 oz / 1 3/4 cups of AP Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp freshly grated Nutmeg
6 oz / 1 2/3 cups Butter, softened 
7 oz / 1 cup Sugar
3 Eggs, removed from fridge to take the chill off.
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 sheet of Parchment Paper

Peel and slice the bananas and mash them and then mix with the fresh lime juice. Preheat the oven to 325F/160 C

Put your parchment paper on a cutting board, and slice around the bottom, to create a piece that will fit inside the pan. Grease the pan with butter, put parchment paper inside the bottom and dust with AP flour.

Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Set this aside and begin creaming the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Lightly beat the eggs and vanilla extract and add this to the butter/sugar mixture in 1/3 increments. Mixing well between each increment.

Add the bananas and then add in the flour mixture in 1/3 increments using a whisk and gently incorporate. Do not over mix.

Put the batter into your prepared pan and into the oven. Check after 40 minutes and go up to 50 minutes if needed. Its best to check with a sharp knife. When it comes out relatively clean, its done.

Remove cake from the oven and onto a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes. Then turn out the cake, remove the parchment paper and let cool completely before cutting.