Banana Chocolate Cake

Happy new year to all my readers!

Did you have a good time celebrating the new year? As for me, I still find it hard to believe that 10 years have passed since we ushered in the new millennium. I still remember that on 31st December of 1999, my friends and I were out partying the whole night. And when I finally reached home in the wee hours of the morning, I was completely exhausted but instead of going straight to bed, I stayed up the whole day watching how the rest of the world celebrated the new millennium on TV. The memory is so vivid that it almost feels like time has never passed!

Well, reminiscing the good old days is a sign of aging, I know. So I shall end the post here with a recipe of banana chocolate cake. :-)

Banana Chocolate Cake Recipe
Recipe adapted from スクエア型ひとつでざっくり作るケーキ

Ingredients:
3 or 4 bananas (cut into length of 4cm, you will need 9 pieces of cut bananas)
60g brown sugar
1 tbs rum

For the cake:
100g unsalted butter
80g brown sugar
2 eggs
4 tbs cocoa powder, sifted
100g self-raising flour, sifted

Method:
1) Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Grease a 18cm square baking pan, line with baking paper.
2) Mix bananas, brown sugar and rum in a bowl. Set aside.
3) In a medium bowl, whip butter and sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Beat the eggs into the batter one at a time, follow by cocoa powder and flour. Mix until just combine.
4) Scrape the batter into the pan. Place the bananas into the batter, let them stand vertically.
5) Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes.
6) Transfer the pan to a rack and let the cake cool for at least 30 minutes. Lift the cake out of the pan by holding on to the baking paper and let it cool completely on the rack before cutting into 9 squares.

**Note: In the original recipe, square pan is used to bake the cake. But I used a rectangular pan instead.