No 21 - Enormous Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

Banana Cake

At the time I started university in 1987, I had a late-Victorian ‘semi’ divided into 2 flats.  I lived downstairs and my tenant upstairs covered my mortgage.  At one change of tenancy a woman turned up to view who seemed altogether too well dressed to want my scruffy flat in our tired part of town.  She was a manager at the city’s only professional, live, theatre company.  Imagine my surprise when later that year Lyndsey turned up in my law class.  She was studying and holding down a job (like me) and had resolved her housing situation by buying an equally aged and equally impractical home – equally in need of some TLC in a nearby suburb.  We became firm friends, sharing interests in growing food, cooking, and studying law; and she educated me in theatre and travel. 

It is one of my great regrets that I lost contact with Lyndsey when she married and moved to South Australia, and shortly after that I moved to England.  I still have her banana cake recipe, and think of her often.  I know she had two sons but they will be young men by now. 

Like her this recipe has travelled too.  For many years after arriving here I lived in a yacht.  Our boat had no oven and I became adept at improvisation (in true theatrical style): producing all cooked food on 2 Diesel-cooker hot spots with 2 pots, 1 frying pan and a 10 litre pressure cooker.

Working on the principle that steamed pudding can be achieved in the pressure cooker, I decided to experiment with it producing bread and cakes.  Steamed bread is OK but  lacks crust.  We preferred the frying pan bread.  However Lyndsey’s banana cake was a great success by this means and was for years virtually the only cake produced in out ‘mobile’ home.  (I say virtually , corn bread eaten with jam was later discovered and deemed acceptable as cake but had to be eaten really fresh.)

I have adapted it a bit to make this big (birthday) cake, adding pineapple to ensure the large cake stays moist with all the extra baking time needed.

Enormous Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

16 oz oil (weighed)
1 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
12 bananas, mashed with 2/3 cup golden syrup
large tin of pineapple, drained and chopped
6 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
4 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1/4 cup of milk
2 packets of dark chocolate nibs.

Grease and line a roasting tin about 12" x 16" and at least 4" deep.

Beat oil and sugar together.
Add eggs one at a time and beat well.
Add the mashed banana, the pineapple, and choc chips.
Sift in the dry ingredients.
Add the soda and milk.

Bake at 160-170 C, for 1-1.5 hours.  Test with a skewer - it should come out clean.

Cool in the tin.  Turn out onto a large tray and ice with lemon/cream cheese icing (see the carrot cake icing recipe at No 12.)