Cup cake

As promised, Simon has sent me the recipe for the lovely (vegan) banana cake that Carrie brought to Little Venice last week. Here it is:

2 cups plain flour (I guess it could be wholemeal but I used white)
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar (I used dark brown)
1/4 cup oil (I used sunflower)
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ripe bananas
(and my variation - 1 teaspoon of cinnamon)

Making it couldn't be easier. You can mash the bananas, mix in the oil, sugar and water, and then fold in the dry ingredients, or you can do what I did and throw all the wet stuff in the trusty Magimix, followed by the dry stuff. Put it in a lined tin (the recipe says 9", mine was about 7"; it took longer but was nice and tall) and cook it at mark 4 til it's done (mine actually took about an hour; it would be less in a bigger tin). It got Baz's seal of approval too; he said 'it's even nicer than ordinary banana cake'. So if you fancy being vegan, or need to cater for someone who eschews dairy, or just want a really easy, lovely cake, this is it.

I must admit I balked a bit when I first saw that the measurements were given in American cups. The first thing I did was look up a conversion (1 cup = 240ml, by the way), but then I thought I would have a look and see if I still had the cup measures I acquired years ago, though I was pretty sure I'd got rid of them. Sure enough I had, but I was delighted to find that this little aluminium cup which I bought at the last jumble sale I went to was in fact a measuring cup.

It will now take its place on Chertsey, in case the oven is ever the right temperature for making cake.