Banana cake with passionfruit icing

Donna's donna

Morning all! Yesterday I had lady finger bananas to use up (I stupidly forgot I don't like lady finger bananas when I bought them) and some frozen passionfruit too so this recipe was perfecto for my cause! It's from issue 21, page 170, and it was very straight forward, I didn't change anything apart from baking the cake about 10 minutes longer but thats fairly usual for our oven.

The missing slice is PFB's husband tax

The cake without any icing (when PFB's tax was charged) was a little on the dry side... but that may have been my fault because it was a little under cooked when the timer went off so I put it back in and promptly forgot about it until the next add break in Offspring.... :o) But once it was iced it was perfect so maybe it was for the better anyway! Oh and I didn't have time to wait for the lemon juice and passionfruit to cool completely before adding the icing sugar so the icing was a little runny, but that's my fault, not donna's!

And by-the-by, this recipe taught me the difference between allspice and mixed spice - I had mixed spice and was going to substitute it but when I googled the two and realised they weren't the same I changed my mind. I'm glad I did because I think it's the allspice in this cake that gives it a really nice flavour (well, apart from the banana of course!!). The link is below for anyone else interested

http://womansday.ninemsn.com.au/food/foodfeatures/993536/allspice-mixed-spice-and-five-spice

Lemon Cake with Passionfruit Syrup

I decided to make this cake since I had been given some delicious passion fruits from a dear friend with the charge, 'make something magnificent!'

I'm not sure if this cake could really be classed as magnificent, but it is quite yummy.

Now, as things usually go, when I finally decided to cook something with these yummy passion fruits, certain members of my family had eaten almost every last one. There were 3 left.

Having already started making the batter I sent Sweetyboy to the supermarket to bring back some passion fruits. From the amount I scraped out of the ones I had I guessed I probably still needed about 8 passion fruits. Passion fruits were $1.69 at IGA. Woah!

So I ended up buying the passion fruit in syrup that comes in a can. not as classy, but it did the job.

After the allocated time, I checked it with a skewer. The skewer came out covered in batter so I put the cake back in the oven, and promptly forgot about it :(

The verdict: Be careful not to overcook this cake. I did and it was a little dry. I am sure if cooked for the correct time it should have been lovely and moist.

It is still yummy though.

Issue 2, Page 30