World's Best....

World’s Best.....

Many years ago I began the world’s largest collection of cookbooks. Thankfully *Goggle (*names has been changed to protect something from whoknowswhat) saved me from going down that path. Goggle is great. I use it to discover most of my dishes and then I print them off and file all the crowd-pleasers into my own folder for future use.

How do you get a great recipe? Well, you can do what I often do and type the following in front of the recipe you are seeking on Goggle: ‘World’s Best.......’

Don’t snicker. If you are going to go to the trouble of cooking; spending all that money on ingredients, using all those utensils, dirtying all those dishes....the result needs to be worth it. Do I hear an Amen? You don’t want to go and break your back and your piggybank for an only so-so dish. I want to be rewarded with a triumph, a crowd pleaser.

So Goggling ‘world’s best’ is often a good starting point. Now of course, there is the occasional issue of a recipe-giver being a little too self-complimentary, and just imagining they have a recipe worthy of the title. Thus it is helpful that most recipe-sharing sites implement a user-rating system and I research THAT as my guide to the authenticity of the World’s Best title.
And through this means I have found World’s Best Brownie
(which I have not cooked yet), World’s Second Best Brownie and World’s Best Choc Chip Cookies, both of which I make all the time and have shared with you. Today I bring you World’s Best Banana Cake!

World's Best Banana Cake

Ingredients:

125g salted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 rounded cup very ripe, mashed banana
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs ( Yes, I added one extra egg to the world's best banana cake recipe; trust me on this Sometimes I even add 2! *gasp*)
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon buttermilk ( I used plain milk)
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius fan-forced. If you don't have a fan-forced oven, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease the side and base of a 22cm diameter round cake pan. Line base of the pan with non-stick baking paper.

Place butter, sugar, banana, vanilla and eggs in a food processor.
Process for about 2 minutes.
Scrape down sides of processor.
Add buttermilk and pulse to combine.
Sift flour, and bicarb of soda together into a large bowl.
Add flour mixture to food processor and process until just combined. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake for about 50-60 minutes, or until a skewer or knife inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Leave cake to cool on a wire rack. Spread cooled cake with cream cheese icing. Store cake in an airtight container in the refrigerator.



Cream Cheese Icing

90g cream cheese, softened
45g butter, softened
1 2/3 cups icing sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Beat cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer until creamy. Add sifted icing sugar and beat until smooth. Add lemon juice and beat to combine. Spread icing over top and sides of cooled cake.