Not your everyday Vegan Banana Cake

First of all i would like to apologize to my Students who asked me more than 2 months ago for this recipe. I cooked for them a version of this banana cake and I couldn't find time to shoot and upload the recipe. I am sorry guys.

Coming back to this cake, this cake is an inspiration from one of the dishes I learnt from my Sister in Law. A much liked fritter in our family which is made when bananas are almost rotten and can't be consumed raw. Their skin is black and the flesh is brown and mushy. That is the perfect time to make that dish. I shall upload that recipe some time too.

For this cake I took not so brown bananas but they need to be ripe enough to be soft and mushy. I like to add my India spices to this cake along with Vanilla so that this cake almost tastes like it came from my in Laws kitchen. I make me yearn more to run to Banaras and meet all of them and cook for all of them and while this cake  baked in oven, my mind starts wandering in my house in Banaras where I find myself in the kitchen, in the Veranda, on the streets and ghats of Banaras with my beloved family. The taste is like my smiles and laughters and giggles of my family all in one bite. Okay enough of the walk down the memory lane.. Let go straight to the recipe because as I write, my mouth is already salivating and I am almost drifting towards daydreaming of how life could be when I would live in Banaras.

Vegan Banana Cake

Ingredients : 

Almost over ripe Bananas : 4

Plain Flour : 100 gms

Whole Wheat Flour : 80 gms

Baking Powder : 1 tsp

Baking Soda : 1/4 tsp

Salt : a pinch

Raw Sugar : 90 grams

Vanilla Essence : 1 tsp

Cardamom Powder : 1 tsp

Black Pepper : 1/4 tsp

Vegan Butter : 70 gms

Chopped Walnuts : 4 tbsp

Raisins : 4 tbsp

Dry Coconut shavings : 4 tbsp

Method : 

Firstly put the over to preheat at 180 degrees. Now mash the bananas into fine pulp. You will notice that when you start mashing the bananas, they will slowly start turning into paste. Its okay if you have little pea sized bits. So make sure that they bananas you are using are so ripe that they can be mashed easily into pulpy paste. Once its done, add your vegan butter, vanilla essence, cardamom powder and sugar and using a whisk, whisk it all together until sugar is almost dissolved and the mixture is homogeneous. You can also use coconut butter or oil and even any other flavorless oil in place of butter. I find butter given it a nice golden brown crust and make this cake more moist.

Now sift in all your dry ingredients except nut and raisin and fold them gently. Avoid over mixing the batter. The batter should be a little thicker than usual cake batter but thats okay. Just add a little water if you think the batter is more like dough. Fold in the nuts and raisin and transfer to greased loaf tin. You can bake these individually in muffin pan or bake these in a round tin.

Bake for 20-30 minutes and serve. If your serve this cake hot it  just tastes like banana fritter. There is another way of serving this cake. Refrigerate this cake overnight and then at time of serving slice it, apply butter on both side and grill it a little. Then a spread little jam over and serve. The Black pepper will give you a kick and the jam in the cake will cut through the richness  and it will taste like heaven. Trust me... Food heaven does have this cake on menu... 

Whole Wheat Methi Mathri(Fenugreek Crisps)

There is something magical about moments. When you are living them, you don't realize that you are going to remember them and this quality makes the moments special. 

Our Evening Tea time at my Mom's house used to be quite an affair. We Punjabis take every meal very seriously! Evening Tea is no any less. This was the time when most of us would come back home from our work, school, college etc, and  we would see our family after hours. Did I tell you we Punjabi's are full of Drama and and Melodrama too? Starting to miss the family after 7-9 hours no matter how much irritating we find our family, is something I have inherited in my genes!

So this time of the day at around 6:30-7:30pm, we would be having our tea with Macaroni made Punjabi style, Bambinos, Sandwiches,  Poha etc etc and if these things are taking too much of time then we would have mini evening tea before our evening snack which would most preferably be with Biscuits and "Methi Mathri". All of my family members would simply have tea with biscuit and mathri except me!  I have my own separate ritual of having Methi Mathri.

This thin crispy, flaky thing we mostly bought from market.  To me the room temperature mathri gave no enjoyment. I would quietly get up and heat Tawa(griddle) on medium low just when I would  see Mumma starting to make tea and put on the griddle, 4 pieces + 4 Pieces in case anyone else wants it too which they always did. By the time tea was ready, the flakiness which we call "Khastapan" for such food items would be blooming and warm mathri would have whole new taste! I relished this treat with always present in my house : Mint Coriander Chutney! It was an intimate affair between me and my warm melt in mouth Methi Mathri! 

I never though that such simple and negligible act of relishing a small piece of mathri would leave such cherished memory that I would actually miss that in Singapore. Here, its difficult to find such thin flaky Mathri, so I tried to attempt it on my own with few healthier variation, making it with Whole Wheat. It turned out just amazing! So sharing a little piece of my magical memories in form of the recipe below : 

Whole Wheat Methi Mathri

Ingredients : 

1. Whole Wheat Flour : 1 cup
2. Plain Flour : 1/4 Cup
3. Fenugreek Leaves (Frozen and thawed) : 1/2 cup 
4. Oil : 2 Tbsp
5. Carom Seeds (Ajwain) : 1/2 tsp
6. Salt : 1 tsp
7. Water : to knead a tight dough 
8. Oil  : to fry

Method :

In a wide bowl, sift together Salt and flours. I took 1/4 plain flour to bring out the flakiness in the Mathri. I feel that the whole wheat flour is too dense to become flaky and crispy. Add Carom seeds, Fenugreek Leaves, 2 tbsp Oil and salt and rub the mixture with hands. Slowly and gradually add the water and knead into a tight dough. The dough should be between crumbly and cohesive, just like pie crust. Let it rest for 30 min. ( I used frozen and thawed fenugreek leaves here because as per my experience, if you use fresh fenugreek leaves, they will be high in surface area and you would be able to use less of them whereas if you freeze them and then use,  use more hence more flavor and also you would be able to manage them well into dough.

After dough is rested well, heat oil in a thick bottom pan to deep fry. In the mean while make coin sized balls of the dough and press them between your hands to flatten them up. The thickness should be 1/2 inch or just that of a crisp.you need them thin enough so that they don't tear when you lift them. 

Keep the oil on medium low and drop the discs into it. When you drop them, you should see tiny bubbles only and now like big bubbles when you make french fires or stuff like that. Try not to crowd  these and make them in batched. These will take 10 minutes per batch. Keep turning them every 2 min to make sure the browning is even on each side. 

If you are impatient like me, you can baby sit these for 5 min and arrange them in one layer on a baking sheet after 5 minutes and once all discs are cooking in deep fryer for 5 minutes, bake them in one layer on a baking sheet on 150 degrees for 1 hour. 

This will do two things for you  : 

 1. You do not have to stand for 1 hour frying these crisps.

2. Baking will drench out a little oil from them.

Only down side is that they flakiness you get from slow fried crisp will be 80% when baked. I find half fry and half bake method preferable as its less strenuous to the lazy person like me. Whatever method you choose, make sure you let them cool down to room temperature fore storing them and store them in air tight container. These will last for about a month. Try eating them with my method. I am sure you will also love that.. :)