Cafe Lula

Yesterday, I made my own cake recipe. I have, in the past, taken other cake recipes and, say, added chocolate chips to it, or switched the type of sugar used. But this was actual flour, sugar, butter, etc. quantities. I was scared. What if it didn’t work? Cooking is about being creative, but cake making is about science and, well, I’m bad at science. But it worked! It worked! Look at it! All… cakey!

I can’t take full credit for the idea of the actual cake. I have a massive weakness for Mars bars. They have gotten me through many a miserable afternoon in the office and, on one particularly productive afternoon, I became obsessed with finding recipes which use Mars bars that don’t just involve melting a Mars bar over Rice Krispies. Eventually I did come across a few recipes which have been sat in my favourites folder ever since. One of these was a banana and Mars bar loaf cake. I forgot all about it until yesterday, when I was searching for a loaf cake recipe to make. There was a comment on the cake not quite being right, and so I decided that this was the day I would make my own cake recipe. Yep. I found a load of banana cake recipes, looked at the varying ratios of ingredients (and they vary a LOT) and decided to take bits which worked in each cake. And yes, I do feel a bit pleased with myself 😀

Banana and Mars bar loaf cake

A Cafe Lula recipe (inspired by this recipe)

About 10 slices

Ingredients:

115g butter (I used lightly salted)

160g brown sugar

2 eggs

2 medium bananas, mashed

220g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp/60ml greek yoghurt

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 60g Mars bars, sliced and chopped

Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease and line a 2lb/900g loaf tin.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the mashed bananas. Sift in the flour and baking powder and stir until combined. Stir in the greek yoghurt and vanilla extract and then fold in the Mars bar pieces.

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes and then cover with foil to stop it getting too brown. Bake for another 40 minutes (so total cooking time is about 1hr 20). Allow to cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.