Butter Cake: When There Are No Bananas To Make Banana Bread

There is a pandemic on, the news is dire to say the least, there’s no point making plans for the near future – the least you can allow yourself is this heavenly butter cake.

DJ put up this cake he made on his Instagram stories and got so many messages asking for the recipe I decided to capitalise on that and publish the recipe now so you guys could do this over the weekend.

Now originally I wanted to make a dry cake – basically I wanted to make something banana bread. Except DJ ended up eating all of the bananas and there are no bananas left in the super market, so we had to improvise. DJ kept singing praises of this cake his mum used to make when they were kids and decided to try it out.

From DJ: We used to love eating butter cake as kids and licking the batter off the mixie (we don’t have one here in London so just mixed it manually with a spoon). I used to help mum make the cake but never appreciated the magic of baking until today. This is my first baking attempt so definitely the easiest cake you can attempt to make.

Skill level: beginner

Equipment:

• big bowl
• spoon
• baking tray
• oven

Ingredients

• White flour (maida) – 2 cups
• Caster sugar – 1 cup
• Butter – 1 cup (You are supposed to use unsalted butter. DJ mistakenly used salted butter and I don’t think it really made a difference to be honest. He melted the butter before putting it in to get an accurate measure.)
• Eggs – 2
• Oil/ baking spray – to line the tray
• Milk – 3 table spoons
• Vanilla custard powder – 2 table spoons (We didn’t find this and just used 3 tablespoons of readymade custard which worked just as well).
• Vanilla essence – a few drops
• Baking powder – 1 level teaspoon

Method

1. Mix the butter and sugar in a bowl.
2. Add the eggs and flour slowly with continuing to mix the batter.
3. Then add in the baking powder and custard powder / custard as well.
4. If you batter is too thick you can add 3 tablespoons of milk to it.
5. The last thing you put in is the vanilla essence.
6. Heat the oven to 175 C.
7. Put the mixture into a baking tray with a bit of baking spray or oil.
8. Bake for 30 minutes. You know its done when you put in a knife and it comes out clean.

Make this today – its so easy and something nice to look forward to this weekend where you need to STAY AT HOME. If you make the cake please comment below and send me photos on Instagram or Twitter or tag your photos with #ffbuttercake so I can find it. Its so easy and just so comforting for right now. I would love to see some photos and exchange some cake recipes!

Slice it up and put it in your cake tin to enjoy like a responsible adult in responsible doses. (Who are we kidding? Its a long weekend, just aim to not finish it all today and thats adult enough for right now).

For more easy baking ideas take a look at our baking section. If you are a coffee lover these cupcakes are amazing.

– Anisha