A good holiday. 2: Indonesia

We went to Bali, Lembongan and Java.
The coffee is good everywhere, although at Lembongan they also had Nescafé. As the kids say these days, fail.
Java had the best pisang goreng. As I mentioned in a previous post, their bananas taste brightly coloured - in fact, they look brightly coloured - and are almost sour.Indonesia has tiny bananas!
We had fresh guava juice.. my life is changed for the better. I also discovered manggis (mangosteen). Wow.

My favourite place was this little village in Java.They farm cassava and corn, among other things. I didn't know until we went there that tapioca is made from cassava! We saw how they make cassava crackers (like prawn crackers). It's a highly manual, labour-intensive process.This is the bank, apparently. Why aren't Australian bankers as cute?That lady with the basket of cassava isn't wearing shoes.

It was nice to be somewhere people don't have Internet. Or running water, I think.. -to wash her hands, our host got the water from a well.
One of my best holidays in a while. :)

Lazy bakey cakey

So. I collected 3.6 smallish (for Australian) bananas to sit on the table.

Made a chocolate cake using two of my housemate's eggs. That she bought from the supermarket. Chook eggs. And some of her cream for the icing (about 2tbsp worth, because it was a ganache that I wanted to set but not be straight chocolate that would fall off when you try to eat it). And a college neighbour's loaf tin.

The 3.6 bananas were now the perfect spottiness.

What would you do?

I know you can freeze peeled bananas, but they're sort of weird when you thaw them. All the water comes out and they look, well, strange.

I wasn't going to steal any more eggs - in fact, didn't really want to use them because they are evil cage eggs.

The solution, of course, was to make another cake: marvellous, amazing, incredible eggless banana bread, courtesy of Archana's Kitchen.

Deliciously ugly.

It's not quite like anything else. Quite dense, strong/bright sort of flavour, slightly chewy crust with a slight sticky date flavour. Excellent warm. Probably not for the faint-hearted sponge lovers (don't get me wrong, I like a good sponge) or those who don't like banana.
Actually, what I mean by calling it a 'bright' flavour is that it's got character to it, a bit of bite. Bold flavour, that's the word. It reminds me thus of pisang goreng in Java, where the bananas are sweet and a little bit sour, like a still-firm mango.

So recipe for eggless bananana bread, based on Archana's:

• 1.5 cups flour
  
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar of some description (I used raw)
  
• 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 cup melted butter (~60g)
• 1 cup mashed banana
  
• 1 cup yoghurt (I used milk mixed with vinegar)
• 1/4 cup rough-chopped nuts, seeds, or weapons of your choice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence (I had none :( )
  

You know what to do! Mix it all together
(instructions:
Combine melted butter with sugar, mix till smooth.
Add the sloppy ingredients (banana, yoghurt, vanilla), mix around a bit.
Add the other stuff and mix through, trying not to overmix unless you feel like a rubbery cake.)and bake in a prepared vessel at 180C/350F until cooked. Depending on the tin, probably 35-50 minutes or so. Be aware that it's quite moist, so will leave evidence of itself on any testing implement, but not huge amounts of thickened batter.

settling slowly, and bananacakesuccess

We don't have these trees in Melbourne.

Having changed location this year, it's taking a little while to get settled in. Moving creates different kinds of crises, and incurs cake-making.

And I have finally DONE IT, made a banana cake that really pleased me. (It's not really the first time, but as I haven't followed an exact recipe for banana cake in a while..)

Banana cake as it should be:
Because an anonymous flatmate (I don't know who) felt the love to cover it.

After one day, this is how it should look:
This is how I know it wasn't just me. It is good. This is the word of the Melbourne flat.

While I didn't have the book in front of me, I did use a recipe that comes from a book. I'm sure the lady who put it in there won't mind me sharing.

BANANA CAKE from the Boort Fiesta Cook Book
3 overripe bananas, mashed
60g butter
1 cup sugar (this is too sweet for me, I use 2/3 cup)
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
1/2 tsp bi-carb soda, dissolved in 2 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tsp baking powder (ish)
1 1/2 cups flour
handful of sultanas and walnuts

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. Add egg, beat til smooth.
Add everything else. Make sure it's all mixed together, without beating the life out of it.
Bake at 180 C for about 50 minutes, depending on your oven and the tin you're using.
At home (yes, it's a Mum recipe) we use a biggish loaf tin. Here I used the only tin I have, which is in fact not mine or even a resident in my flat, but is a borrowed tin. It's round. It was a HUGE SUCCESS.
I didn't have walnuts, but this meant I got to use up some cashews/pepitas/sunflower seeds that weren't going to get eaten. Toasted them in the preheating oven and chucked them in at the end. Yum!