Banana and Pecan Muffin Cake

Finally!! a no sugar, no white flour recipe that works really well!!
This recipe really gets your hands dirty... you have been warned :)

You will need:

4-5 medium sized ripe bananas
1 cup Maple Syrup (You could even experiment with honey and let me know the result)
1/2 cup butter (cold butter from the fridge is best, or room temperature is ok too, dont melt)
1 Tablespoon Vanilla Essence

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp fine salt
2 tsps baking powder

1 cup pecans (chopped), you can replace with walnuts if you wish.
1/2 cup dried raisins

Clean your nails, preferably trim them :) and then wash and dry your hands,

Pre heat the oven to 250 deg
Sift the flour, salt and baking powder at least 3 times through a fine sieve. Keep Aside.

Mash up the bananas really well with your hands, so little pieces are still there. Add the butter and again mash it into the banana mixture, add maple syrup and vanilla essence, and with your hands blend the whole thing properly. It should smell gorgeous: bananaey and mapley with a hint of vanilla...



Now to this add the flour, baking powder and salt mixture and again with your hands mix it really well.. Do not use an electric blender or a spoon. Use your hands and squeeze and blend and make the flour and banana mixture into a nice homogeneous mass. It will be smelling delicious, and will be gooey and will have dropping consistency...

Add the chopped pecans or walnuts and raisins to this mixture, reserve a small handful to garnish. Mix the nuts and raisins in well.

Lightly grease with butter a baking tray and pour the mixture into it.



Put to bake for 40ish minutes. See below.



About half way through at approx 25 minutes, when the mixture has firmed up a bit, you can optionally give it a milk bath. Using some a liquid which is 1 part milk, 2 parts water, just brush the top of the cake lightly and quickly and replace into the oven. This just gives a very nice glaze effect to the cake. It shines when it is done :)

Remove from the oven. Let it cool just a bit before cutting it up and serving. We had it just like that, with chocolate sauce, with it drenched in maple syrup, with some honey, and with french vanilla ice cream!

Its a really simple cake to make and we had lots of fun to making it! This cake is enough for about 5-7 people...