The adrenaline is pumping and your heart rate is elevated. Why? Well that's easy, you have no idea what the cake is up to until you open the door.
Isn't rule 1 of baking never to open the door before you think the cake is baked? Well this recipe is a perfect example of that being total tosh.
To further demonstrate that baking isn't complicated, scientific and sacred to only the most accomplished pastry chef, I also used a recipe that involved simply putting everything in a bowl and mixing. No creaming of butter and sugar, no sifting of flour, just into the bowl and mix.
Sounds easy right? Well, it is.
Ingredients:
200g Self-Raising Flour
200g Caster Sugar
200g Salted Butter
4 medium free-range Eggs
3 very very ripe Bananas
1 tsp/cap full of Vanilla Extract
2tsp Bicarbonate Soda
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
I have baked a Victoria Sponge in the aga using silicone tins straight onto the shelf of the oven but for this recipe I have used an 'Aga Cake Baker'.
http://www.agacookshop.co.uk/bakeware/all-bakeware/aga-cake-baker.html
Pictures of the fully assembled baking pan to come, however what this wonderful contraption does is moderate the heat of the top oven to allow deep cakes that require over 45 minutes to bake to cook fully all the way through without over-cooking/burning the top.
This is perfect for the banana cake which takes about 1 hour to cook depending on the heat of your Aga.
So, the steps:
1. Grease your cake tin liberally with butter and line the base with grease proof paper/baking parchment
2. Add all of your ingredients to your mixing bowl
(this recipe is ideal to use up fruit that has its own personality due to its over-ripe'ness)
3. Mix until smoothish, but certainly until all of the ingredients have combined - I use a hand help electric whisk (you can just see it in the shot above)
4. Put into your cake tin and into the Cake Baker
(Notice how the cake baker holds the cake tin away from all sides of the pan)
5. Seal, and put into the top oven
Our Aga is currently running at between 180-200 degree Celsius depending on how hard the wind is blowing - you may laugh, but it is entirely true!
Because of this I pushed the cake to the very back of the oven on a shelf as high as would allow the cake baker to fit.
I forgot about it for 1 hour and came and took a peek.
Tragedy, the cake hadn't really begun to cook - it was still molten cake mix, but had risen slightly.
I slammed the lid back onto the cake baker as quickly as I could and put the cake back into the oven pretending it had never happened and came back in 30 mins.
You wouldn't have known I'd committed the worst atrocity of cake baking - check out the end result...
Unfortunately there are no pictures of the cake out of the tin - it was eaten before I could take the lens cap off of the camera!
What you should expect with your banana cake is a lovely moist cake that although is crumbly and light in texture is more dense than your victoria sponge.
Coming out of the Aga it weighed a ton, almost as much as my mood as I thought I'd ruined it by opening the door too early however don't be fooled, it's delicious!
