Leftover Banana, Honeycomb and Chocolate Cake

After rescuing some rather disgusting looking banana’s from my work colleagues I decided to bake this cake as it also fitted the fact I had been a bit of a banana at work – more on that confession later.  I really enjoyed the lemon and blueberry loaf cake so this seemed like the next step.

There is nothing better than using up manky bananas that look like they could walk to the bin on their own and then like a magician turning them into something amazing with chocolate.  I like to add honeycomb for a really delicious twist. Banana’s (so Mr Nigel Slater tells us) are at their baking best when they are black as they are full of sugary sweetness so I figured well why not and I am glad I did.   This cake also freezes well.

Being a Banana (The Confession)
I spotted a note randomly left on the side in one of the teaching room’s and being a tidy freak I picked it up .  Nothing special about it – I had a look and the teacher in me noted that the spelling was incorrect with some crossing out (ironic as my spelling is awful online). 

I turned it over to read the other side and now I was rather confused as both sides looked the same.  I turned it over again and thought to myself ‘perhaps they rewrote it because of the spelling?’ and I continued this pattern whilst walking to my next classroom.

As I entered the door of the room I burst out into laughter, you know the real deep right from the pit of your belly type laughter and tears streamed down my face as it suddenly dawned on me how incredibly dumb and a complete and utter silly banana I had just been.

My husband calls me a malteaser as I am brunette but with an inner blonde struggling to get out.  I always make objections to this as I don’t think being blonde makes you any less intelligent but clearly the note in this case was quite right for me.  In my defence if a child had handed it to me then I would have been suspicious straight away but sadly it seems senior moments are most definitely coming my way (early) so watch out it will be hot flushes next!  Sadly I also have to say that my posts are about to become less frequent as this time of year in teaching land is to put it quite frankly a nightmare time of coursework and exam prep hell.  My already filled evenings will be spent extracting and marking coursework until the small hours leaving not a lot of time for baking, photographing, #FF and writing so I am sending love to all my readers and thank-you for your patience I’ll post when I can and yes I can hear all those violins you are playing for me now 🙂 but I do have a collosal coffee inspired macchiato cake planned for medicinal purposes to keep me awake (of course) so do pop back,

Adapted from Nigel Slater – Black Banana Cake (here)

175g Softened butter
140g Golden caster sugar
2 eggs at room temperature
35g Dark soft brown sugar (plus a small handful to sprinkle on top of the cake)
2 Over ripe black bananas
175g Self raising flour
70g Dark chocolate (chopped roughly or 100g if not using honeycomb also)
1 honeycomb bar (crunchie) or I used my own homemade honeycomb which needed using up
70g Milk chocolate (chopped roughly or 75g if not using honeycomb)
1 tsp Vanilla essence (I make my own as it is so easy – click here to find out)

1. Preheat the oven to 170 / 150 fan or Gas 3
2. Line a 2lb loaf tin with baking paper or liner
3. Beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy
4. Add one egg and mix until combined
5. Add half the flour and mix until combined
6. Repeat with the remaining egg and flour
7. Add vanilla essence, mashed banana and chopped chocolate and fold into the mixture just until combined (do not over mix)
8. Put mixture in the tin and sprinkle dark brown sugar over the top
9. Cover loosely with foil and place in the oven (middle shelf )
10. Bake for 50 mins, remove the foil and then continue to bake
11. Bake for the remaining 10 minutes or until cake is golden brown and is springy to the touch
12. Leave in the tin to cool completely
13. Devour with a steaming mug of hot chocolate to wash it down!

Next post alert!  Baking Addiction Part 2 – Confessions of a Baking Addict (Stage 3)

Not read part 1? – click here for a chuckle