Banana and Pecan Spiced Cake Slice

This is a great tasting “cake slice” that delivers lots of flavour with not too much effort.  It is particularly good for using up any ‘sad’ bananas from your fruit bowl or, in my case, ones I have stored in the freezer.  See below for my TIPS AND HINTS for frozen bananas.

When I was baking this cake the other day Wilbur confidently stated he did NOT want any cake ...  no prizes for guessing how strong his resolve was ...

Ingredients

3 medium bananas – very ripe, roughly mashed 

TIPS AND HINTS  Store any over-ripe Bananas in your freezer. Just leave the skin on, place banana in a plastic bag and freeze. Use within a month.  Perfect for these types of recipes!

To de-frost: remove banana from freezer, skin will be brown but fruit will be fine.  Leave skin on until able to handle. Remove the skin and roughly mash the fruit. NO waste!

185 gram Butter, softened

185 gram Brown Sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

200 gram Self-Raising Flour

¼ teaspoon ground Nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground Cloves

¼ cup sultanas – roughly chopped

150 gram Pecans, roughly chopped   PLUS    extra for decorating the cooked cake

Honey Icing

250 gram Philly Cream Cheese – softened to room temperature

¼ cup butter – softened

½ teaspoon Vanilla extract

¼ cup Honey  (I like to use Australian Kangaroo Island Ligurian Raw Honey) or any well flavoured honey

50 gram Icing Sugar – sifted

100 gram Milk Powder (low fat if you prefer) 

Decoration:  Some sliced pecans, Seed Mix with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pinenuts

TIPS AND HINTS  The Milk Powder replaces much of the sugar in the Icing Recipe.  This reduces the sugar content and gives a lovely creaminess to the Icing mixture.

Method

Preheat oven to 180° C

Check butter and bananas are at room temperature.

Line a 20cm x 30cm x 4cm deep tray with baking paper.

Use an electric mixer (or by hand) and in a large bowl beat the butter, sugar and eggs for a minute or two until well combined.

Lightly fold in the flour and spices.  Do not overwork.

Fold in the mashed banana, sultanas and pecans to evenly combine.

Pour into prepared tray and bake 25 – 35 minutes. 

Check at 25 minutes.  The middle of the slice should be cooked when pierced with a skewer.

Allow to cool in the tray on a cake rack.

ICING

Beat the Cream cheese and butter until pale and creamy.

Beat in the vanilla, honey , icing sugar and milk powder until dissolved and well combined.

Should be thick but still spreadable.

Spread over the cooled slice.  (If cake too warm, the icing will melt off into a gooey mess)

Decorate with sliced pecans and seed mix.

TIPS AND HINTS  any remaining icing can be stored in a freezerproof container ready to defrost for next time! 

                                             Enjoy!  Colleen