Banana and orange yoghurt cake

The past week hasn’t been my best. It started with my 8 month old daughter falling face first down 3 steps, minutes before I had to drop her with my Mom and leave on a plain to Bloemfontein for a 3 day business trip. It was the first time that I had to leave her for a whole night or more with someone else, and I’ve been preparing myself mentally for that. But I didn’t expect it to begin with a traumatic faceplant! It was just horrible sitting in Bloemfontein, knowing that she needed my familiar face to comfort her. Still, I knew she was in excellent hands, so I just had to wait it out.

On my return, I caught a horrible case of the flu and have been sick like a dog for the past 5 days. That means no running in the mornings (something that usually keeps me sane) and no lying in the perfect winter sun on these wonderful balmy days that we’ve had in the Cape over the last few weeks. I am homebound, feeling dreadful. At least my daughter is doing much better, and it is so great to be back home with her!

So what did I do? I resorted to baking. But things didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to – almost like the rest of my week. I started baking a Banana and Granadilla Yoghurt Cake from the fantastic little Sasko recipe book that we got at the FBI earlier this year. Then I realised that I didn’t have enough bananas or enough yoghurt, and that I didn’t have any self raising flour. I also didn’t have grenadilla pulp. Or caster sugar. Geez, it was starting to look like a complete disaster! But I decided to try my hand at improvising – and to my surprise I came up with a cake that actuallly worked.

This is the original recipe for Banana and Granadilla Yoghurt Cake from the “Show your goodness with recipes from Sasko” cookbook. And next to it you’ll find my almost-disastrous-but-magically-tasty substitute ingredients for what became a Banana and Orange Yoghurt Cake. It actually turned out to be not too much of a yoghurt cake after all…

Ingredients:

• 250 g soft butter/margarine (I used margarine)
• 500 ml castor sugar (I used regular white sugar, but added an extra 50 ml)
• 2 large eggs
• 4 mashed bananas (I only had 2)
• 1 x 175 g tubs granadilla yoghurt (I used half a cup strawberry yoghurt, plus 200 ml milk mixed with 3 tablespoons lemon juice to create a  thick soured milk)
• 4 cups Sasko self-raising flour (I used 4 cups regular cake flour, then removed 4 teaspoons of the flour and added 4 teaspoons of baking powder)
• 1 tablespoon orange rind (this wasn’t in the original recipe, but I decided to add it for extra flavour)

Method:

1. Grease a 25 cm ring cake pan and pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Cream the butter/margarine and sugar with an electric beater untill light and fluffy.
3. Add the eggs and beat well.
4. Stir in the bananas, yoghurt (and soured milk mixture) sifted flour (sift the flour and baking powder together before adding it to the mixture) and orange rind.
5. Spoon into the greased tin and bake for 50-60 minutes or untill a skewer comes out clean. This mixture was too much for my cake tin, so I filled my cake tin about 2/3 and spooned the rest into a small loaf tin, which I baked at the same time.
6. Turn the cake out and cool on a wire rack.

Icing:

The original recipe calls for 400 g icing sugar (sifted) and 80 ml granadilla pulp, beaten untill smooth. I decided to rather use a traditional cottage cheese icing that I make for carrot cakes. It was a match made in heaven! You can decide which one you want to use. Here is the recipe for the cottage cheese icing:

• 250 g icing sugar, sifted
• 100 g softed butter
• 125 g creamed cottage cheese
• 5 ml vanilla essence

Beat all the ingredients together untill smooth and creamy. Spread generously over cooled cake. Garnish with extra grated orange rind.

Nothing beats the smell of freshly baked cake straight from the oven. It heals many wounds!