Yes­ter­day Squidge and I planned on doing some bak­ing. It had been ages since we’d baked and Squidge was very excited. We ended up hav­ing a sur­prise visit from friends which was per­fect as I could send half of every­thing home with them. We made oat­meal craisin cook­ies which were very nom, sorry no pho­tos. We also made Banana Lemon Cake and as nod to Valen­tines Day I added some red food gel. This was a mis­take. It tasted good but we really do eat with our eyes and the Pepto Bis­mol cake just looked wrong.

Cake
250g plain flour
1 1/4 tea­spoon bak­ing pow­der
1/2 tea­spoon salt
115g but­ter, room temp
200g gran­u­lated sugar
115g soft light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1/2 tsp grated lemon rind
3 medium ripe bananas, mashed
1tsp vanilla paste
50 ml milk
75g walnuts

Frost­ing
115g but­ter, room temp
475g icing sugar
3–5 tbs fresh lemon juice

1. Pre­heat oven 180°C, grease 2, 9 inch cake tins.
2. Sift flour, bak­ing pow­der and salt.
3. Cream the but­ter w/ the sug­ars until light & fluffy, beat in the eggs one at a time. Stir in the lemon rind.
4. In a small bowl mash the bananas with the vanilla and milk. Add the banana mix­ture w/ the dry ingre­di­ents then slowly add to the creamed but­ter. Fold in the nuts.
5. Divide the bat­ter between the two pans. Bake for 30–35 min­utes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave for 5 min­utes then remove from tins and con­tinue cool­ing on a wire wrack.
6. While cake is cool­ing made the frost­ing. Cream the but­ter until smooth. Slowly add in the sugar. Stir in the lemon rind and the juice.
7. This is a layer cake, take some of the frost­ing and ice the bot­tom layer, place the other cake on top and ice the entire cake.

Some of the things I’d do dif­fer­ently; make a thin runny icing a glaze the cake. I found the icing to be too much. Because of this I would bake the cake in a bundt pan or a taller cake tin at a lower heat. Keep the icing au nat­ural! Just say no to day­glo cakes!