Banana and "honey" teabread

Mr Snowball has just started a new job, commuting into central London for the first time in about 10 years, so I thought I would make a gluten-free cake to cheer him up when he got home last night. I had a whole bunch of very ripe bananas sitting in my fruit bowl and normally I peel them and pop them in a bag in the freezer to use another time but found a Mary Berry recipe for banana and honey tea bread so used them "fresh".

I also realised I didn't have the thick honey the recipe calls for, and actually not even enough honey, so I used what I had and made up the quantity with golden syrup.

I'm not sure what difference the golden syrup made - perhaps it made it a bit sweeter than if it had been made entirely with honey, but the sweetness wasn't overpowering. The resulting teabread was delicious and almost half was consumed within five minutes of slicing the first slice ...

Banana and Honey Teabread

Ingredients
225g self-raising flour
¼ level tsp freshly grated nutmeg
100g margarine
225g bananas
100g caster sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon
2 large eggs
6 tbsp thick pale honey

For the topping
2 tbsp honey
nibbed sugar

Preheat the oven to 160C/Gas 4. Lightly grease and base line a 900g/2lb loaf tin with greased greaseproof paper.

Measure the flour and nutmeg into a large bowl and rub in the margarine using your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Peel and mash the bananas and stir into the flour mixture, along with the sugar, lemon rind, eggs and honey. Beat well until evenly mixed, then turn into the prepared tin and level the surface.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 1¼ hours or until a fine skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cover the teabread loosely with foil during the end of the cooking time if it is browning too much. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack.

For the topping, gently warm the honey in a small pan, then brush over the top of the tea bread. Sprinkle with the nibbled sugar.

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Moshi Monster party - the cake

Sophie decided she wanted a Moshi Monster birthday cake with individual moshlings on top rather than a cake in the shape of a moshling (which I was hoping for, as it would have been much easier!). I contacted the ever helpful Fans of Cake Baker on Facebook for ideas and some lovely ladies kindly supplied photos of cakes they had done. I had an idea of what I wanted to do and thankfully one of the photos matched the vague visions in my head and helped solidify the final design.

I started making the moshlings in fondant about three weeks ago, as I knew that they would need some time to harden up. I found some images online and then shrunk the images to the size I wanted the actual moshlings to be. Sophie and I chose six (as she was six): her favourite, Oddie the doughnut; Justin's favourite, Hansel the gingerbread man; and four others that she liked and I thought might be possible to make. I was very pleased with the finished moshlings, all except for the cupcake Cutie Pie which was the only one that I felt wasn't quite right.

I chose to make chocolate sponge (like soil under the green hill) and baked four layers to give me the height; I really need to invest in a set of matching cake tins as I only have one 9" tin which meant I had to mix and bake, mix and bake x 4. This was time consuming but did mean that each layer cooked perfectly.  I added a bit of fun by colouring the buttercream between each layer a different vibrant colour: blue, pink and yellow.

I also mastered a new skill by covering the cake and board in one go (rather than covering the board first and then the cake separately). I thought this might be tricky but it actually worked much better than I had hoped. 

I then decorated the cake with a few simple things (after all the moshlings were the main decoration): a fence, gate and some flowers. I embossed the strips of "fence" with a curly embosser (I don't have a wood effect one but will invest in one at some point) which added a bit of texture to the fence. The gate required a bit of thought to get it looking right but I was pleased with the end result. 

I added flowers growing up the fence and used Sophie's Buster's Lost Moshlings book for inspiration. These included an orange mushroom tree and some star blossoms in pink and blue. I added royal icing stems and leaves to these and glued some shimmery nonpareil around the bottom of the cake and in pools around the flowers.

I finished by adding Sophie's name and six tall candles and voila, one Moshi Monster cake all finished.

In addition to the main cake, I also made some faux ice-creams. I baked cupcakes in flat bottomed ice cream cones and then piped bright buttercream swirls and added some glitter. Advice on how to do this again from Fans of Cake Baker on Facebook: fill the cones two thirds full with cake batter and bake as normal, then once cool, prick the bottom of the cones to stop them going soggy. Perfect! 

I am pleased to say that the Moshi Monster cake falls into the same category as Justin's monster birthday cakes as one that "just makes me smile". I hope it does for you too ...

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.