Cake

On a whim this afternoon I decided I would have a go at making banana bread out of the mouldy-looking bananas left in my fruit bowl (too soft to eat "raw", even for me). I considered just throwing them out but I'm haunted by reports that as a nation the British throw away around a third of the food they buy, and I don't want to become just another statistic.

The recipe that I've been using for a few years now is neatly written in my best schoolboy handwriting on a page torn from an old notebook - I think it must date from when I did "home ec" at secondary school. (I sometimes wonder how profound an influence the random choice of home economics and Latin, rather than woodwork and metalwork, has been on my later life.) Later someone rather pompously told me that the recipe is actually cake and not bread, but I've since forgotten what the distinction is.

Anyways this effort came out ok on the outside but a bit undercooked in the middle (I used a skewer to test whether it was cooked inside but probably in future a knife would be better). As this has happened before I've wondered a few times if the cake tin I have is the wrong shape somehow, or else maybe I need to cook it at a lower temperature for longer. Or maybe I put too much banana in it. Or all of the above.

It's not too bad with a cup of tea (especially as I like my cakes to be a bit moist), however I'm not sure that I'll be offering anyone else a piece of this one - maybe next time.