Dessert: Whole Wheat Chocolate Banana Spice & Nut Cake

Well felt like binging on some  guilt free dessert so did a check on what I have available in my kitchen and came up with overly ripe bananas and some leftover walnuts. So thought of making a chocolate banana spice and nuts cake. Results were pretty good.

I have used whole wheat flour,the same with which I make my daily chapatis(Indian flat bread).The cake is sweet enough for me but for people who want little more they can adjust sugar quantity.

It’s a pretty dense cake but tastes great and you won’t feel guilty picking up one extra piece. It’s a good option for kid’s lunchbox too.

 You can easily change the choice of nuts according to your liking.Like sometimes i use dried apricots and dried figs too.If you like orange and chocolate combination you can add some candied orange peel too.

Ingredients:

4to5 large bananas (over ripe)

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/8 cup cocoa powder
1/2cup powdered jaggery ( in Hindi -gud ka burra) or regular sugar
2/3cup olive oil or any neutral flavoured oil

1/3 cup of milk (if required)
1/4 cup almonds (chopped roughly)

1/4 cup walnuts (chopped roughly)
1/4 cup raisins

1tsp. baking powder

1/2tsp. baking soda

A pinch of salt

4 cloves (crushed)

1/4 tsp of cinnamon powder (according to your liking you can reduce or increase its quantity.

1 +1/2tsp. vanilla extract (always try to use pure vanilla extract makes world of difference.

Method

1.  First of all find 4 to 5 very ripe bananas, because they tend to be much sweeter and stronger in flavor.

2.  Take a blender jar of your mixer chop bananas into big chunks add jaggery powder or sugar, olive oil, vanilla extract and blend all ingredients together.

3.  In a bowl take whole-wheat flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, pinch of salt.

4.  Now it’s time to crush/chop, walnuts and almonds.

5.  Add these nuts along with raisins to dry ingredients in the bowl.

6.  After putting together all dry things in bowl add the mix we have in the blender to it.

7. To bring together all dry and wet ingredients you can keep adding milk to the batter.

8. The batter in this cake tends to be thicker than usual cake batter but if you find the batter too dry you can adjust milk quantity a little bit.

9. Prepare a cake tin or a glass ovenproof dish by greasing it with oil and then dusting it with whole-wheat flour. I have used parchment paper also which makes it easier to pull out the cake but if you don’t have it, that’s fine too.

10. Pour the prepared batter in the dish and put it in a preheated oven at 180 degree Celsius for 45 to 50 min in the middle rack of your oven. But do check in between as every oven is different.

11.  After 45 to 50 min. check the cake with a knife or wooden skewer if it comes out clean your cake is done.

12. Cool it to room temperature and enjoy.

Tips

1. I would suggest that you cut the slices as you need or else sometimes it tends to get dry.

2.  Outside the refrigerator it can last for 2-3days in this humid Mumbai climate.