Banana-na Cake

Nana's a prolific banana cake baker. Every time I stayed at nana's she'd always have one sitting on the bench to be taken home to Auckland. Most of the time it made it back intact, but once or twice we'd get hungry on the way home and eat a slice. Work lunches that next week were the best! I delved through Nana's recipes positive I'd come up with at least one banana cake recipe, but on my first pass I came up empty handed. Then... success! I'd put a pile of recipes aside in my 'to try' pile and 'Bella's Favourite Banana Cake' was among them.
Our hopeless oven did cause a few problems, with the cake taking 1hr 15 rather than 45 minutes to cook. I was a bit worried about the result, but it turned out perfectly! It was a high, moist cake that wasn't 'soggy' in the middle or on the bottom.
I had a few limes left over from dinner the night before (mmm Frangelico and lime on ice), so made a tart lime icing with the zest and juice of two limes.

Delish!

Cooking a "decent dinner" for the twits

The twits (aka my beloved sisters Amy & Lee) made the mammoth journey from Manly into 'unsafe' Surry Hills just to eat my food today. I was touched... really!

I was told it had to be a 'decent meal otherwise we're not coming'. With such expectations to live up to I got up early and hit the Pyrmont Growers Market with Sarah & Joh. The menu came together pretty easily as we explored the stands. A big bag of the most summery tasting vine-ripened tomatoes and a large bunch of basil were quickly earmarked for bruschetta.
A few stalls along I found some green beans and bright, firm capsicums, so they were put down for the veg part of the meal. A huge ciabatta loaf and some creme fraiche also went into my bags. Neil scored some beautiful smoked shortcut bacon, and I also got a huge bag of broccoli and some Lemon Myrtle pasta. Yum! Breakfast was a hard choice, but I managed to narrow it down to a large, sultana-filled snail from the patisserie.

A trip to the fishmonger with the cripple (aka Neil) in the afternoon yielded four nice red snapper fillets which would be steamed with lime wedges and a basil leaf for the main.

I wanted dessert to be something a bit special that I hadn't tried before, so I decided on a chocolate and apricot tart that Sarah had made for Andre's birthday dinner in June (pic below). We hunted high and low for the recipe in her vast collection of mags, and finally found it in Delicious.

So the menu in the end was...
Tomato bruschetta (ciabatta brushed with leftover roasted garlic, diced tomatoes, shredded basil and Horopito oil)
Red snapper with capsicum sauce
Green beans, red & yellow capsicum and cherry tomatoes
Chocolate & apricot tart with creme fraiche

And the twits ate every bite!