Banana Matcha Cake - One-pot baking

Banana matcha cupcakes, or tea cakes, I suppose, as there isn't any icing

Two things happened recently.

One, I came home to a shattered glass bottle and half-fermented ginger beer in my cupboard (thanks to G's experiment), and at the back of the cupboard, found a long-forgotten bag of different teas, one of which was matcha (green tea) powder. Two, I got a giant bunch of very ripe organic bananas from a farmer for free (it was the end of the day at the Markets).

Matcha and frozen bananas

I went online to see if I could freeze bananas (yes I could!) and found that the best way to freeze them was to peel, then freeze them whole. (Apparently freezing them in their peels makes them black, but still edible, although it means you always need to defrost them a little and peel them before you can use them). And then I went online again to see what I could do with bananas.

After a couple of days of banana smoothies (awesome, because since the bananas are frozen, you don't need to add ice, but it's a pretty heavy breakfast) I decided to bake with them and found a recipe for matcha banana cake - perfect.

If you're lazy and hate washing up, you could potentially make this in one saucepan. If you do, make sure your saucepan is a little bigger so that the batter won't overflow.


THE INGREDIENTS:

125g butter
130 g granulated sugar (up to 150g if you have a sweetooth and/or if the bananas aren't too sweet)
1 egg
2-3 very ripe bananas, mashed*
190 g self raising flour (or 185g plain flour and 5g (1 1/4 tsp) baking powder)
1 tbsp of matcha (green tea) powder
60 ml milk
1 vanilla pod, scraped, or 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Makes 12 cupcakes, or 1 loaf cake (around 18cm long)

THE METHOD:

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celcius and prepare your cupcake pan as you wish (grease, paper liners, silicon moulds, whatever).

Butter and sugar in a saucepan. You'll need a bigger one if you want to do the whole thing in one pot. If you're a perfectionist, you can cut the butter into cubes first, but I'm not, and I'm lazy, so I just break the block of butter as it melts.

Put butter and sugar in a saucepan and melt on the stove on very low heat. (Butter splits and burns, and sugar burns, so if you're not a careful kind of person, boil water in a saucepan and place a bowl on top, with the ingredients in the bowl, while the water simmers. If you use the direct-stove method, you may find that you need to take the pot off the heat every so often). Leave to cool.

Milk, flour, matcha

While the butter mixture is cooling, sift flour and matcha powder together.

Add a few drops of vanilla extract (or vanilla pods if you're lucky)

Once the butter mixture is cool (can still be warm to the touch, just not scorching), add vanilla (scraped pod or extract), bananas*, and egg, and beat to combine well (make sure banana is evenly distributed).

Frozen bananas, roughly chopped

*If you're using frozen bananas, defrost slightly, roughly chop, then blitz with a hand blender.

Blitzing frozen bananas with egg into butter mixture with a hand blender.

Fold in the dry ingredients and milk.

Yep, I don't own a cupcake tray, and it is totally okay (on both practical and emotional levels)

Pour into the cake moulds and bake for 30 mins (35-40 mins for a loaf cake) or until a toothpick inserted in the thickest point comes out clean.

If you want to make frosting, try this matcha one from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.

Adapted from a recipe found on Matcha Tea Factory.