Strawberry Cake

It's summer, and it's hot, which means picking desserts for Sunday dinner is a question of finding something cool and light. And with strawberries in season, a simple sponge cake, whipped cream and strawberries was all we felt like last weekend, so that's what I went for. No picture yet, but I'll add it as soon as I've uploaded it.

The week before that was the Euro 2008 final, and we had a party at a friend's which required another cake. This was my experiment cake - I actually made a half football! The base of the cake was a plain vanilla sponge with buttercream, and the football was chocolate sponge, covered in marzipan and baked in - believe it or not - a soup bowl! I had fun with this one, and definitely want to try making some more exciting cakes or cupcakes soon!

Chocolate Banana Cake

Because I’m now home from college, I have very little to do during the day besides bake and go on my dad’s brand new treadmill (which is probably quite a good combination!). Not everything I bake is worthy of display, but this one is, I think.

I love banana cake. Most of my family do. And it’s the perfect way to use up the over-ripe bananas that so frequently appear in our fruit bowl (because my dad and brothers only eat them slightly green and my mum and I don’t usually eat them as fruit).

I don’t usually follow a particular recipe, and this time, although I did browse the net a bit, was no real difference. I sort of followed this recipe from the BBC Good Food website, but made many modifications. I added cinnamon to the mixture instead of cocoa (not the same amount of course!) and put the chocolate in as chips instead of melted.

I didn’t grease the pan quite enough, so was left with a lot of cake sticking to the bottom, which required patching back on, so I felt I had to put something over the top. Chocolate frosting would have been too much, and any other flavour icing didn’t seem quite right. I finally decided on a very liquid chocolate ganache. It worked very well, and the cake is a huge success. Will definitely be making it again!