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Sky-high Banana-chocolate chip cake


After obsessing about the Sky High baking group pics from several years ago, and buying the Sky High book, I've funnily only ever made one recipe - the buttermilk cake recipe, that is *drumroll* up till now!! It was my brother's birthday and ... I realised that in our family we don't have any "favourite" cakes. My sister doesn't do raisins, my parents don't like cinnamon or anything other than vanilla sponge with whipped cream, but we have NO FAVOURITE CAKES. Which, can be quite handy.

So today I made Banana and chocolate chip cake from the book. Shockingly easy, but also in the american way of baking, not so great on the results. Let me explain, if you gave me a list of ingredients I am almost always going to go butter, sugar, eggs, flour - in that order. This cake is almost muffin-like in it's creation. Dry meets wet, meets some more wet. I think the texture suffered as a result and it didn't have the lushness of banana bread. A bit more cream maybe would have helped - or not leaving the cakes in for as long as instructed or cooling unfilled for as long. It's possibly one to develop, but I think there are enough chocolate and banana cakes for me to experiment with not to touch again. It's good to know that I can finally chalk another one off the list though, but as ever I have a quarter cup of buttermilk left over. Is it time to make pancakes or scones this time?

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