A cake: inspired by Gib's Aunt.

I doubt whether there are any Australian mothers left out there who don't this cook book:

It's a classic in every household. Gib and I were housesitting for Gib's Aunt over the weekend and it was sitting on a little table next to the bed. I really should not have been surprised to find this book next to the bed as Gib's Aunt is one of the most amazing cake makers you'll ever meet. I had hoped that her amazing cake-baking skills would infuse into me during my time at the house, and it seems that that may have happened.

I had six passionfruit and two ripe bananas sitting in the fruit bowl and, lo and behold, on page 60 of the Women's Weekly Cakes and Slices cookbook there was in fact a recipe for Passionfruit and Banana cake that required five passionfruit and two ripe bananas. Here is the recipe, from Australian Women's Weekly (1991) "Cakes & Slices", p. 60

• 125 g butter
• 1 cup castor sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 mashed bananas (3/4 cup)
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 200 g passionfruit yoghurt (I substituted for 175 g natural yoghurt and the pulp from 3 passionfruits)
• 1 cup wholemeal self raising flour
• 1 cup plain self raising flour

Passionfruit icing

• 1 1/2 cups icing sugar
• 1 tsp soft butter
• 2 passionfruit

Grease a 20cm round cake tin, line base with paper. Grease paper.
Cream butter and sugar in a small bowl with an electric beater until light and fluffy. Add egg until combined. Transfer to a large bowl.
Stir through banana, walnuts, yoghurt, (passionfruit), then sifted flours.
Spread mixture in to a prepared pan and bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour (although it took 1 1/4 hours). Stand for 5 mins before turning out. Top with icing when cake is cool.

For the icing:
Sift icing sugar into a small bowl. Stir in butter and enough passionfruit to make a stiff paste (mine was a bit runny, I think. Oh well.)

Here are the results:


I reckon this was one of the best tasting cakes I've ever made. Moist, tangy and neither dense or fluffy. The icing was very sweet, but it was thin enough that it didn't bother me. Delicious.