Today is a public holiday in all the three countries I have lived in – Germany has it’s long Pentecost weekend, England another May Bank Holiday and the US are honouring their Memorial Day. 

Hopefully, all of you who live in these countries have gotten at least one long breakfast or brunch in on one of the three weekend days. And maybe you have got time to get baking today too, in which case you may want to try out making this crowd pleaser of a banana cake. 

It’s actually the receipe for Pret A Mangers banana cake – or at least thats what I am told. It certainly tastes as good as the banana cake they sell there and is super moist, which is how I like my banana cake.

I had smaller than usual cake tins I wanted to use and, as you can see in the picture, the receipe yielded the 3 cakes of that size but usually the receipe would probably make two loaf cakes – or one big loaf cake if you have a big tin.

For the cake you will need

• 2 eggs
• 200g soft brown sugar
• 300g banana, mashed with a fork
• 2 tsps baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 130ml vegetable oil
• 240g plain flour
• 45g banana, chopped into chunks

For the icing you’ll need

• 30g unsalted butter
• 225g icing sugar
• 100g cream cheese
• 1/2 lemon, freshly squeezed
• Preheat the oven to 120 degrees celsius.

Grease your baking tin(s).

Whisk the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the mashed banana, bicarbonate of soda, salt and oil and continue mixing until well combined.

Slowly whisk the flour into the mixture, then fold in the chopped banana and pour the mix in the tin(s).

Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer poked into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes and then turn the cake onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Make the icing by beating the butter and icing sugar together until pale – which is pretty much impossible with so little butter, so you may want to add the cream cheese and lemon just straight away as well, if you need to. Some way or another you have to get everything whipped up to a frothy concoction. Do this with a whisk at high speed. When light and airy, spread over the top of the cooled cake. Allow to set before cutting the cake.