“Freshly baked apple sauce & banana cake with fresh banana bites, for babies, and all.”
Oh ok, yes, I had some over ripen bananas leftover on my countertop. I always wanted to bake apple-banana cake that is suitable for young toddler to indulge in. And, here you go.
This apple-banana cake was great. Moist, soft, with natural sweetness from the ripped banana and apple sauce, mostly. Also, I added loads of banana and did not blend it thoroughly into the batter to leave some banana bits in the bake on purpose. So, yes, your baby would love to chew on the real banana in the cake. So do you!
Oh yes, it is for the family (despite the adding of baby formula which you wouldn’t even able to taste it a bit in the final bake), in case you don’t know. So, go ahead to serve it to all other family members and friends, like I did!
Serves 8-10
Ingredients
100 gram of unsalted butter, room temperate
4 tablespoons of of caster sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
2 medium eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons of milk powder (age-appropriate baby formula)
4 large ripe bananas, mashed
1 medium red apple, peeled and cored
175 gram of of unbleached plain flour, sieved
1½ teaspoon of baking powder
½ teaspoon of baking soda
½ teaspoon of salt
Utensil:
Electric mixer
8″ rectangular cake tin or 2 small rectangular cake tins
Method
1) Sift the flour, mix in baking powder, baking soda, baby milk powder and salt. Set aside.
2) Peel and cut apple. Steam apple with 25ml of water and blend into apple sauce of about 50-60ml. Leave it to cool.
3) Cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl (hand whisk or electrical blender) with medium speed until fluffy.
4) Add vanilla essence. Then, add lightly beaten eggs and beat mixture with low speed for 30 seconds.
5) Alternate the adding of flour and apple sauce into the butter mixture, in stages. Beating speed remains low while blending. Beat about 5 minutes, or until lightly fluffy.
6) Now, fold in lightly mashed banana. Consistency of the batter should be moderately thick.
7) Preheat oven with 170°C for about 3 minutes. Grease cake tin with butter, and spoon cake batter into it. Place cake tin in middle rack and bake for 35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted (into middle part of the cake) comes out clean. Leave it on the rack to cool completely before removing from cake tin. Cut and serve, or store it in a food container to serve as snack or breakfast the next day.
You may find the cake a little bit wet, but it’s totally expected due to the banana bites in it.
** Suitable for baby over 12-months old.
Tips: Add your baby formula, or standard full cream milk powder for baby over 12 months old.
* I added sugar as I was serving it to adults as well. You may reduce or totally eliminate sugar adding, for baby, if desired. It will be much less sweet, but it’s just good enough for baby’s palate.
* Depending on the size of your apple used, you may have more than required amount of apple sauce. Just remember that only 50-60ml of apple sauce is needed in this recipe. So, any excessive amount should be discarded. Or, wait, feed the excessive sauce to your baby as snacks! :)
