Banana & Chocolate Mini Loaf Cakes
Whilst I was in Australia I searched high and low for some friand pans that didn't weigh a tonne; silicone would have been ideal. Friand pans were few and far between even in a country where friands are readily available in coffee shops and cafes, so I returned to the UK disappointed, but with a new cookbook containing several friand recipes. Friands, in case you haven't had the pleasure of coming across them, are small, moist oval cakes (almost bite sized) loosely based on French financiers and similar in texture to a sponge. In Australia and apparently New Zealand too, they come in all sorts of flavours including coconut, lemon, raspberry and chocolate. I had a lemon & poppy seed version in Sydney a few years ago and fell in love. Unfortunately I still don't have my friand pan, although recently my mum sent me 18 silicone cake cases for mini loaves. At roughly 7x3 cm these are dinky and cute. This recipe for Banana & Chocolate mini loaf cakes came from Waitrose and whilst their recipe was geared towards the use of 150ml capacity mini loaf tins or 10 x 125ml muffin tins, this worked to make 24 very mini loaf cakes for me. These are absolutely gorgeous & very easy to do. If you can get a hold of these little cases, they make for a novel treat. I will carry on looking for the friand cases and get back to you with a recipe for those soon.
Banana & Dark Choc Mini Loaf Cakes
Great taste, odd shape
My Christmas mini cake tin!
Lovely dark chocolate pieces
These are set aside for my colleagues at Calendar Club
Ingredients
- 250g plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 125g unsalted butter, softened
- 250g caster sugar
- 4 ripe bananas (or 3 large), mashed
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 175g dark or milk chocolate chips
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180℃/gas mark 4. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.
- Mix the butter, sugar, banana, eggs, vanilla extract and chocolate chips in a separate bowl.
- Add to the dry ingredients and stir to combine, being careful not to over mix. Divide the batter between the tins or cases and bake for 30-35 minutes. When golden brown and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the middle of the cake, remove from the oven. Leave to cool in the tins or cases for 5 minutes before turning them out onto a wire rack to cool.
Bilby Boost
- These take around 45 minutes to create, from start to finish.
- I didn't have any chocolate chips, but instead used up some Green & Black's 70% dark chocolate broken into small pieces, left over from Christmas.