Eggless Peanut Butter Banana Cake Recipe

I have to say, ever since I tasted my first egg-free cupcake I was COMPLETELY hooked. In my opinion egg-free batters make for a more delicious, soft and moist cake and are JUST as versatile as your regular cake recipes... you can add anything to create the cupcake of your dreams and for some reason they just always work. Now I'm not saying I have anything against the humble egg. I still love my eggies, and I'm certainly not about to start substituting eggs in all my recipes (I love citrus tart too much to do that!!!) but as far as my cake baking is concerned, an egg shalt not grace thy Pyrex bowl from hence forth! Unless you know, there's a really awesome looking one on Pinterest that I just HAVE to make that contains eggs... gotta spread the tasty love right?
So I wasn't entirely sure on the quantities for this to begin with, I kinda just tossed the ingredients in and hoped for the best but it worked! Hoorah! You want to know something funny? For years I had no idea what the difference between baking soda and baking powder was and whenever I found a recipe that contained either, I'd substitute half my plain flour for self raising. Sometimes it worked, but as you can probably imagine most of the time it didn't. I never actually owned any baking powder until recently and now my opinion on it lies somewhere similar to the egg thing.... if you can use baking soda and baking powder in a cake recipe as a pose to self raising I'd definitely recommend it. It just makes the batter fluffier and takes away some of that density that using self raising can sometimes cause. If the recipe actually SAYS to use self raising though I'm going to use it but at least now I can stop skimming over a recipe just because it calls for two things I'd never used or even owned. Foiled by my own ignorance! Haha! But anyway, here's the recipe for a somewhat delicious cakey morsel and I do hope you'll love it as much as I do!

Eggless Peanut Butter Banana Cake

 Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius

1 cup lite milk 

1 tsp apple cider or white vinegar

3/4 cup castor sugar

1/3 olive/canola oil 

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups sifted plain flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 large banana cut into slices

1 large tbs of smooth peanut butter

Grease and line a spring-form cake tin with baking paper, place banana slices on the bottom of the pan. 

Whisk together milk and cider (or vinegar) in a bowl and set aside to curdle a little. Meanwhile mix flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. After a few minutes take your milk mixture and whisk in the sugar, the oil, vanilla extract and continue to whisk until sugar has dissolved, oil is incorporated and mixture appears foamy. Add your dry ingredients to the wet in two batches, whisking all the time. Whisk until batter is smooth and lump-free. Mix in peanut butter. Pour batter over bananas and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Leave cake to cool for 10-15 minutes before taking it out of the pan. Place cake bottom up (banana-side up) on a cooling rack to cool completely. Don't forget to carefully remove grease proof paper from the bananas, could make things tricky if you forget and ice the paper... you don't want that derp moment, trust me.  

Frosting

125g unsalted butter at room temp

1/2 mashed banana 

1 cup icing sugar

1/2 cup dried banana chips blitzed or crushed into smaller sized pieces

Using an electric beater, beat butter until it's pale and creamy. Add banana and icing sugar and beat together. You may want to use a bit more or a bit less icing sugar depending on consistency. If it's too runny add more icing sugar, if it's too thick add a little more mashed banana. Ice the sides and top of your cake and sprinkle crushed banana chips over the top. Boil the jug, make yourself a cup of tea and have a slice!