Boozy Oversimplified Banana Bread/Cake

I have a really complicated relationship with the Cavendish banana.  I can barely choke one down- the overly starchy soft texture that coats your teeth is just awful.  I know they are essential when on the trail- I can really push myself to eat half of one when my leg cramps start up- but I consider the banana more enemy than friend, even when it is magically making my cramping mucles feel like new again.

And don't get me started about artificial banana flavor. 

Somehow, banana in baked goods is really pleasing- any rage or anger about bananas pretty much melts away.  I realize it's the un-ripe yellow-skinned banana that is repulsive to me.  When the skins turn black and the innards turn to mush is when I come to terms and actually like banana.  It's rather a crap time trying to eat one in the leaky state, but the sweet, heady ripeness that borders on rot is just hedonistic.  

This is why I generally have a bunch plus a handful of loose bananas in the freezer- I love a good 'nana bread.  I've played around a bit with different versions over the years, and this is really the simplest thing to whip up in the kitchen.  I found that I don't like walnuts or dried fruit or anything else to roughen up the bread.  Feel free to add to your heart's content- about 60-100 grams of walnuts or sultanas would do nicely if you are into that sort of thing.  The recipe that I've adapted from the most comes from Nigella Lawson.  She soaks dried fruit in rum before adding it to the cake.  I took it one step further and added a shot directly to the cake.  I'm not a rum drinker and rarely have it on hand, so I reach for the giant bottle of scotch from the shelves of the duty-free shop.  

Finally, last summer while I was hiking across the Lake District on the Coast to Coast trail, I stayed at a great B&B.  It was a renovated farmhouse with bits of the ruined abbey down the street "borrowed" in the building process.  They had a fabulous breakfast spread and correctly identified banana bread as banana cake.  It has eggs, flour, and sugar in it.  Sounds like a cake to me!  Yet still, we insist on calling it bread either out of habit or stubbornness or misguided attempts to sell this as healthy because it's filled with banana goodness, and to sneak in a slice for breakfast without hesitation.  

Also:  cream cheese.  It's the best thing for this.  

Recipe:  Banana Bread  

1oz shot of rum or whisky

175 grams (1 1/4 cup) white flour (I have mixed in some wheat flour in mine)

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

125 g (1.2 cup) unsalted butter, melted, plus a bit more for greasing

150g (3/4 cup) sugar

2 large eggs

4 overripe bananas, peeled and mashed into a puree 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or the seeds scraped from half a pod)

Preheat the oven to 170c.  Grease a loaf tin, and then line with parchment paper if you feel the need.

Put the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and soda, salt) in a medium bowl and sift together.  In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended.  Add the eggs one at a time, and then the pulpy mashed bananas, vanilla and booze.  Once a homogeneous mass, add the flour mixture a little at a time until it is blended.  

Scrape the bowl into your loaf pan.  Bake in the centre of the oven for about an hour- a toothpick will come out clean and the house will smell of comfort and calories.  Let cool slightly and serve with a healthy wedge of cream cheese or clotted cream.

Boozy Apricot and Sweet Potato cake

Calling anything "boozy" just endears itself to me.  Take this cake for instance.  

I first encountered this recipe, unappetizing titled "Apricot Yam Loaf" from the otherwise wonderful and out of print cookbook from Alice Medrich called "Chocolate and Other Low-Fat Deserts".  Forget the faddy diet gimmick, this book has some real winners of less-than cloyingly sticky sweet sweets.  That cookbook, along with the other couple hundred of cookbooks in my collection, are all in storage.  Many a sleepless nights have been spent digging around the reaches of the internet, looking to see if some food blogger somewhere had republished an old favorite of mine.  Lucky day, a few months ago David Lebowitz republished this oldie but goodie, and I went to work on making it my own again.  

While putting vegetables in sweets is nothing I usually seek out (remember the whole Sneaky Chef feud?), I find that sweet potatoes work well in a cake base.  It lends it a sweetness and earthiness that I find incredibly appealing.  While there is no way no how that I would declare this cake as healthy because of its vegetable content, I would suggest that it was perhaps a better alternative than a plain white flour and sugar cake.  It's worlds more interesting anyway.  

Back in New York, I had a tricked-out gadget-strew kitchen.  Those days are gone now, and my Cuisinart stand mixer and hand-held electric mixers are all tucked away in storage indefinitely.  That doesn't stop me from baking.  I'm low-tech now, refusing help from the machines, and justifying the creations of buttery sugary goodness by the insane beating that I give them beforehand and getting overdeveloped arms because of it.  Don't despair- with a little elbow grease, you will have lump-free fluffy batter as well.  Although you might be a bit crazy to attempt something like meringue without a mixer remember that it was invented long before electric mixers were, and some poor chef at some point would have had to give those egg whites a beating by hand.  I comfort myself with this though halfway through the cake-making process.  

It's also quite a forgiving cake.  The first time I made it, idiot that I am, I forgot to set the time on the oven and left it in 10 minutes longer than I should have.  It was just fine though- the extra moisture from the sweet potatoes and the booze-soaked apricots did a good job to make sure I didn't have to suffer through a hockey puck of cake, and it wasn't even terribly dry.  The second time, I wised up and set the timer and it came out even better!  

You can use leftover roasted sweet potatoes in this dish.  Next time you are roasting them for dinner, throw a couple extras in and behold, you have your base for cake the next day.  Otherwise, you can just microwave them as I did, since I'm lazy.  

The other thing I love about this cake is while it's in the oven, I can sit down and have a nice lunch of the leftover sweet potatoes and drink the apricot-flavored vermouth as a kind of a pre-game.

I've made a few changes, but it is still recognizable as the yam loaf from days of yore.  Oh, and the icing isn't in the original either (hello, low fat cookbook).  Thank M. Lebowitz for that stroke of genius.  Cream cheese frosting tends to make everything spectacularly good.  

The other thing about this cake is that it freezes really well.  We are but two people and an entire cake sitting on the counter leads to unhappy stale cake after a week of sitting out.  No one wants that.  I cut it in half once cooled, wrap half of it tightly in plastic wrap and freezer bags, and then cut the icing in half to compensate.  Sure, you could make the entire batch of icing and frost half the cake with it, but that is so not in the spirit of a low-fat frosted cake.  

Go right ahead.  

I'll be waiting by the phone to hear you say how good it is.  

Recipe: Boozy Apricot and Sweet Potato cake

115g (2/3 cup) diced dried apricots

125ml (1/2 cup) dry vermouth (but I suppose sweet would work as well)

225g(2 cups) flour (I used a combination of white and a light whole wheat)

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

75g(6 tablespoons) unsalted butter at room temperature

200g (1 cup) Demerara or Muscovado Sugar

zest of 1 lemon

2 large eggs, at room temperature

240g (1 cup) cooked sweet potato flesh, well mashed or pureed if you have a food processor  

125g(1 cup) toasted almonds, chopped

Frosting:

• 225g (8oz) cream cheese, room temperature
• 60g (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100 g (3/4 cup) powdered sugar

Do-ahead:  Soak the Apricots in the Vermouth for at least a halfhour.  Overnight wouldn't be overdoing it if you have the foresight.  Drain, reserving the liquid.  DO NOT WASTE BOOZE.  

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f.  Grease 2 8" loaf pans, or whatever cake pan you happen to have.  Mine is kind of a terrine pan, but it somehow manages to do.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

In another bowl (or in a mixer) cream the butter with the sugar and lemon zest until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs and combine thoroughly. If using a stand mixer, stop the mixer and scrape down the side to make sure everything is incorporated.  If you are doing this by hand, I salute you and your giant guns.  

Mix in half of the flour mixture, then the drained vermouth and sweet potato puree, then the rest of the dry ingredients. Stir in the nuts and apricots.

Divide the batter into the prepared pans, smooth the tops, and bake about 55 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool completely.

Once cool, make the cream cheese frosting by beating the cream cheese with the butter and vanilla. Add the powdered sugar, mixing until smooth and lump free. Divide the cream cheese frosting on top of the cakes, spreading it with a knife or spatula.  

Enjoy, it's just lovely with tea.  

Since the recipe makes two loaves, you can freeze a cake.  Wrap it well in plastic once it's cooled.