This was a late Mothers Day bake I made on Monday and I'd never tried it before, its a really easy recipe, as long as you have an evening free to watch the oven!
It is a Hummingbird Bakery recipe, the first one kind of is the Bible but their new recipe book 'Cake Days' is basically the New Testament. It is very similar to my Banana Loaf recipe.
You will need:
190g unsalted softened butter
190g plain flour
190g caster sugar
3 large eggs
1tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp poppy seeds
2 tbsp lemon zest
25ml whole milk
80g ricotta cheese (you can replace it with yoghurt!)
FOR THE SYRUP:
Juice of 1 lemon
50g caster sugar
You need to do:
1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees and grease and flour your loaf tin. You pretty much need a Kitchen Aid for this recipe otherwise your arm will die. Cream the butter and sugar together.
2. Add the eggs one by one and push the sides down with a spatula. In a separate bowl measure the flour, baking powder, salt, poppy seeds and lemon zest. Now the lemon zest is tricky to measure into a spoon so I just grated the whole lemon in there.
3. You have to add these dry ingredients in thirds, mixing well each time on a low speed. After the second go add in the milk. Once its all in whizz it on high for a bit until its completely mixed in. Then add the ricotta cheese (or yoghurt)
4. Pop it all into your loaf tin and level it out. Put it into the oven for 50-60 mins, mine took longer than that but just keep it in there until your skewer comes out clean through the middle and its nicely browned on top.
5. About 10 minutes before it's all cooked make your syrup by putting the sugar, lemon juice and 100ml water into a saucepan and bring to the boil and let it reduce by half.
6. Once the loaf is cooked, prick a few holes in there with your skewer and pour your syrup over while the cakes still hot. Leave the loaf to cool a bit and then turn out onto the wire rack to cool it. Cut it into yummy chunks and eat away with a glass of cold milk. Enjoy!
This recipe is from the Hummingbird Bakery book and it is honestly the best baking book I've used, the recipes always turn out brilliantly and look so professional! I would strongly suggest buying the book.
The banana loaf is such an easy recipe, anyone could do it, and its seriously good stuff!
You will need:
270g soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
200g peeled bananas, mashed
280g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
140g unsalted butter, melted
(I told you I'd do a proper recipe soon!)
You need to do this:
1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees, for AGA lovers I put mine on the floor of the top oven with the grid shelf on the floor and put the cold shelf on the second shelf (complicated huh?)
2. Put the sugar and eggs into your mixer with the paddle attachment and beat until smooth, for those without the wonders of mixers just beat for ages with a wooden spoon until your arm is dead! Mash you bananas loads, the older they are the better because they're more squishy! It looks gross but its yummy, I promise.
3. Add the flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon and ginger and mix until all incorporated, pour in your melted butter (30 seconds in the microwave) and mix until it looks a bit like this, it should be quite thick:
4. Prepare your loaf tin with butter all over and then lightly dust with flour. Don't leave any excess flour so tap the tin and tip the flour out.
5. Pour your delicious mixture into the tin and smooth it over with a spatula. Put into the oven for 1 hour or until a skewer through the middle comes out clean (I checked it at 45 mins as you can judge how much longer it needs by then)
6. Take it out of the oven and let it cool in your tin for a few minutes until transferring onto a wire cooling rack. You're supposed to wait until its completely cool to cut it into about 1 inch chunks, but we were too hungry to wait so cut it when it was still warm, this just means its slightly crumbly.
You have to make these, they're absolutely delicious and so easy! So next time you have some old bananas that you want to get rid of then make these! We;ve already eaten almost half of the loaf and its barely cool!
