Peanut Butter Banana Moist Cake

Happened to enter the kitchen one evening and felt that I had some time on hand and wanted to bake something different. Saw some bananas waiting to used in something, some peanut butter left in a jar, a couple of eggs and I thought why not try out a cake with these ingredients instead of the usual cookie.

And so started my quest for a moist peanut butter banana cake which ended up successful enough for me to blog about it!! Here goes!!!

Ingredients:

2 1/3 cup flour
2 cup jaggery
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/2 cup butter
1 cup milk
2 eggs ligtly beaten
2 bananas mashed
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

Method:
1. Add the flour, jaggery, peanut butter, melted butter and mix it either with a wide spatula or best done by hand till it becomes a crumbly mixture.Reserve one cup of mixture for later use.
2. Now make a small well right in the middle of the mixture and add milk, eggs, mashed bananas, vanilla, Baking Powder and Baking Soda.
3. Mix all the ingredients well into a batter.
4. Meanwhile you need to pre-heat the oven to a 160 deg C
5. Grease a pan and pour the batter and then top it with the reserved crumble mixture.
6. Bake the cake for about 40-45 minutes and ensure that the top mixture (crumble layer) does not get burnt.
7. Check if the cake is done by inserting a tooth pick. Enjoy the cake with some Butterscotch sauce. Awesome!!

Tip: If you feel the top of the cake is getting burnt then you may cover the top with Aluminium foil.

Almond Date Cake (Eggless)

Finally it has arrived!! Egg less baking in my blog. For all my dear vegetarians who have been patiently waiting to this day thank you so so much.

I will be posting cooking tips to all my previous recipes which had eggs as to how they can be prepared without eggs. As you know this blog consists of recipes that are tried and tested. A dear friend A has taken the pains to convert many of my recipes into egg less versions and she claims that they taste as good as the ones with egg.

The first in this list is the now famous Moist orange cake that can be now prepared without egg. You will find the updated post here!

Okay now back to the main post. Hmm..Where should I start. I remember this one colleague of mine S who always used to ask for egg less cakes whenever I used to take my baked goodies to the office. She was very patient since it has been close to a year and I never ever tried egg less baking even once.

The main reason that I used to stay away from egg less cake it in order to substitute the egg (which to a certain extent I do consider extremely healthy no offence) the egg less version used loads of butter, cream etc. etc.

My search for a healthier egg less versions has taken me to a number of sites, places, people but none of the recipe got me so intrigued that I immediately wanted to bake it. Till I chanced upon this amazing post by Shilpa called Date Cake @ Aayis Recipes

I have changed the ingredients to suit my taste. So here goes the recipe:

You will need:

• 20 Dates (I used Lion Dates)
• 1 Cup Wholewheat Atta (I used Ashirwad)
• 1/2 Sugar
• 3/4 Cup Milk
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• A pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
• 1 tbsp of vinegar
• 1 fistful almonds (powdered roughly)

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160 deg.
2. The dates should be soft enough to be ground into a fine paste. If not you may need to soak it overnight. I used the "Lion" brand of dates that are extremely soft and de-seeding them took 5 minutes hardly.
3. Grind the dates, milk and sugar into a fine paste. Add the oil, vinegar and set aside.
4. Sift the Wheat flour along with the Baking Soda and salt. Twice is very good if possible.
5. Now just add this into the date paste and mix with a spatula carefully little by little.
6. Add the almonds and mix into the batter carefully.
7. Once well mixed pour it into an oiled baking tin and bake for about 25-30 minutes. The time may vary depending upon your oven.
8. Check if your cake is done by inserting a toothpick in the center of the cake.
9. Enjoy your egg less cake with your favorite ice cream.

P.S: I found that this cake is a little fudgy and dense may be because of non-existence of egg, may be due to the dates. Nevertheless it was yummy!!Eggitarians try baking it with an egg and omit the vinegar, use 1/2 tsp of Baking Soda.