I've been making a lot of banana bread and carrot cake over the last week, trying to come up with a recipe for my mother. My mother works as a chef at a kindergarten and she's been tasked with making these two cakes next week for 100 children.
My mother has almost never baked in her life, so I need a recipe that is very, very simple. The school has also requested that the recipe is minimally sweet, has little oil, lots of bananas and carrots, and preferably no dairy.
So you see I have problems with dry and/or overly dense cakes. I'm looking at essentially a healthy quick bread type cake without egg beating etc.
I've finally arrived at recipes that I'm happy with. I'm so sick of eating carrot cake and banana bread and the kgs are certainly piling on. I'm finishing this post and putting in a good 12k run to keep things somewhat manageable.
But here's something very interesting I found out. In my attempt to keep things so simple for my mother, I thought of always having the wet and the dry separate, and I always lumped the mashed banana and the grated carrot into the wet ingredients. These would be mixed into the egg/sugar/oil mixture, and then the whole wet contingent would be mixed with the dry, minimally and gently.
Here's the thing: this actually creates a much denser crumb structure. If everything else is kept constant, mixing the dry and the wet, AND THEN gently stirring in the banana/shredded carrot, will give you a more aerated crumb.
I don't know if everyone already knows this, but discovering this has changed the game for the kind of recipe I'm trying to develop for my mother. Might be worth implementing for any similar sort of inclusions into cake batter - I will need to a whole lot more for her in the coming weeks, e.g. sweet potato, courgette/zucchini, beetroot...
-Lin
No biggie, I'm pretty sure you'll nail the formula soon!
Jay
Thanks for the encouragement, Jay.
Lin, you might wanna try isolated steaming that I always did during college days. It's basically just wrapping cake pan with cling wrap, so steaming moisture won't get in. I managed to lower sugar as low as 50% (to my experience) without drying out the cake (because it's isolated).
The downside, you have to serve it as slices. It's best to keep egg whites tho at the very least, to make soft peak meringue, going semi-chiffon cake like texture
Jay
I will try this out for sure.
Hi Lin, I have found that coconut flour helps hold moisture in quick breads. The general guideline is you can replace up to 20% of the flour with coconut flour and add an equal volume of liquid to the recipe. Coconut flour is high in fiber and it absorbs a lot of water.
Are you saying you can't use eggs either?
I also think the coconut flour could be a great addition here. And as you say, it is strongly absorbent of moisture and will then need lots of eggs, say 4 or 5?! Can you imagine the lovely taste?
Great discovery about the order of mixing, Lin. A bit like not over folding, I'm thinking.
-Jon
It was precisely because I wanted to guard against my mum over folding that I thought of adding the banana/ carrot to the wet ingredients rather than after the flour addition. Who would have thought!
Thanks Debra, I didn't think of that. I can use eggs in the recipe, just not milk or butter. Would you recommend adding an equal proportion of eggs and oil, then? I could also experiment with adding more bananas to increase moisture. I've never used coconut flour, only coconut milk, coconut cream and dessicated coconut.
Eggs help with structure, but you don't need to increase them, the sugar or the oil for coconut flour. You can add plain water. But why not try increasing the bananas first, since that was one of the preferences and they bring a lot of water. Back off the bananas if the crumb gets pastey. That's the biggest problem increasing bananas and other fruit or vegetable mashes that weigh down the structure. If you're already having trouble with the density, then test a batch with coconut flour without adding any more moisture.
Unlike desiccated coconut, milk or cream, coconut flour doesn't bring a coconutty flavor, so you don't have to worry about that where you don't want it.
Lastly, if/when you feel the consistency of the batter is right but you aren't getting enough rise, you can try adding or increasing baking powder. You'll find out if there's enough structure to support it. Be open to the possibility that you may need to develop the gluten a bit more, and maybe that's why you're getting less density by mixing in the banana or carrot after everything else has been combined. I have found, particularly with my whole grain muffins, that they benefit from vigorous whisking. Try not being so gentle :)
Thanks, Debra. Appreciate it. Especially interesting that you've found that vigorous whisking is needed for whole grain muffins! I'll start by substituting a small bit of flour with coconut flour, whisking a little more, and go from there.
Lin, this is a sugar free banana bread recipe I have made a few times, with good results:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/sugar-free-banana-cake
Funnily enough, it talks about wet and dry mixtures! I have a slightly tweaked version that I wrote up, if of any use....
Lance
What kind of tweaks did you make?
Just some general improvements:
Ingredients:
125g wholemeal flour, sifted fine sieve or atta
2 tsp baking powder + pinch salt add to sifted flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon ditto
100g sultanas
35g butter, melted + 15g evoo
2 egg or 1 egg + 1 white
1 tbsp marsala or sweet sherry or milk
3 ripe medium bananas, mashed
Sml handful sunflower seeds
This looks great. Appreciate your sharing these tweaks.
For fun I used ChatGPT for the following : 'vegan no sugar banana bread recipe in grams with bakers percentages 20 × 10 × 10 cm pan'
You could add your specific requirements.
Tony
Here's the result:
Awesome! Here's a second cleaner version — only bananas for sweetness, no maple syrup at all.
This keeps it 100% naturally sweetened from fruit only. 🍌
Vegan No-Sugar Banana Bread (Sweetened Only with Bananas)
What's different:
Instructions:
Same as before:
Would you also like me to show a baker's percentage diagram (like a pie chart) to help visualize it? 🎨
It could make adjusting future recipes even easier!
Oh it's fun!
But the following seems too depressing for my liking... poor kids 😂
I just can't 😂😂😂
From the looks of it, quite insane! 200g of flour, 300g of bananas and only 100g liquid without sugar?!
Kindergartners have a chef? 😄
All meals they get are warm and prepared in the kitchen on site. The school used to buy all their pastries for the final break but have now asked my mother to give it a go. Some kids stay the whole day as it's kindergarten + after school childcare.