MACMILLAN COFFEE MORNING
On Friday morning Journey Recruitment in Wokingham hosted their Macmillan Coffee morning. It was a great success. We had several stalls selling everything from cards to jewellery, lovely toiletries and craft goods. We held a raffle and served endless cups of coffee, tea and delicious cakes. We managed to raise almost £350.00 in aid of Macmillan and would very much like to thank everyone who came and supported us on the day and who baked cakes for us to sell – we were truly overwhelmed by the number of people that came along. Everyone sampled the huge variety of cakes we had on offer –two of the most popular were a Banana Cake and some Belgian Biscuits – we were asked for the recipes by lots of people so we have decided to post them on our blog. The Belgian Biscuits are a New Zealand favourite and are truly delicious. One of the best things about the Banana Cake is you only need a saucepan and a cake tin – no mixer or other things to wash up!
BANANA CAKE
Ingredients
170g slightly salted or unsalted butter
2 large ripe bananas (these can be really ripe)
285g self-raising flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
225g granulated sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
Pinch of salt
3 eggs
Method
Heat the oven to 140 degrees C.
Grease and line an 8” cake tin.
Melt the butter together with the sugar in a saucepan on a low heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.
Mash the bananas on a plate and add the vanilla essence.
Beat the eggs in a bowl.
Take the saucepan off the heat. Sieve in the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda.
Add the beaten eggs to the mixture in the saucepan.
Add the mashed bananas and mix thoroughly.
Pour the mixture into the cake tin and cook in the oven for one hour 40 minutes. Check after one hour.
Belgian Biscuits
Ingredients
120g butter
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
½ cup raspberry jam
FOR THE ICING
2 cups icing sugar
1 teaspoon butter
Water
Method
Cream the butter and sugar, then add the golden syrup and then egg
Mix in the dry ingredients
Roll out half of the mixture to cover the base of an 18 x 23 cm slice tin
Spread with raspberry jam and then cover with the other half of the mixture rolled to fit
Bake at 180 degrees C for 20 minutes
For the icing, mix together the butter and icing sugar with enough hot water to make a smooth icing. You can add a couple of drops of raspberry essence if you like. Then sprinkle the top with hundreds and thousands.
