Clare Johnston shares a new baking favourite that includes a whole banana (with skin), nuts, plant-based oils and more – but in a win-win, it tastes just like the original, less healthy version.
A few weeks back I shared my recipe for chocolate chunk cake which my family has, frankly, become obsessed with during lockdown.
For me, one of the struggles with feeding teens is that they lean (heavily) towards junk food and so I’m always looking for, er, creative ways to feed them fruit, veg and nuts.
That’s why I turned to baking as a crafty route to hiding healthy ingredients in something that looks like it belongs on the naughty shelf alongside crisps, sweets and biscuits.
This recipe for healthier chocolate chip cookie cake, adapted from the earlier incarnation, is the culmination of three months of seeing how much I can get away with. Quite a lot, as it turns out.
There’s already quite a bit of good stuff in baking, like eggs, flour, and even butter in small amounts, that have their nutritional place. But in this recipe I’ve trimmed back on the sugar, I’ve swapped butter for extra-virgin olive and groundnut oils, I’ve added ground almonds and a whole banana WITH skin.
Please don’t worry about the skin, you won’t notice it. Give it a good old mix at high speed and it’s gone. By using a slightly under-ripe banana you will barely taste the fruit. My kids don’t know it’s in there. But the reason I use it is both for texture – because it gives the cake a really wholesome, interesting bite – and for fibre.
Plant fibres are really important for good gut health and so if we can sneak them into foods that would otherwise not do us too many favours then it’s a win-win as far as I can see.
It’s not completely virtuous. I use a dollop of Nutella (mainly for colour but it adds a wee bit of flavour too) as well as milk chocolate so there’s plenty there to get our sweet fix from, while still giving ourselves a nutritional boost.
I should also say that I make this using gluten-free flour because we’re a coeliac household, but these measurements should work fine with regular flour, too.
Healthier Chocolate Chip Cake
Ingredients
For the cake
200g all-purpose flour
60g ground almonds
100g golden caster sugar
1 level tsp of baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
40ml Virgin olive oil
40ml Groundnut oil
3 eggs
1 heaped teaspoon of hazelnut chocolate spread
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 whole banana, ends cut off, chopped into chunks
125g chocolate chips or bar broken into individual pieces
For the icing
60g of melted chocolate
2 heaped teaspoons icing sugar
Half a tub (90g) cream cheese
(For special occasions, I double the quantities to give the cake a really good covering – but the more you make, the greater the calories.)
Method
Preheat the oven to 180c (fan) and grease two 8-inch round cake tins (I use groundnut oil for this).
Add the dry ingredients to your mixing bowl followed by the oil, eggs, vanilla essence and the banana chunks. Mix using an electric mixer thoroughly so that the banana is finely blended before adding in the chocolate chunks. Blast again for 10 seconds in the mixer, then split the cake mix between the cake tins and bake in the oven for around 35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Set aside to cool for 10 minutes.
Beat your icing ingredients together quickly in a bowl until glossy and spread over the partially-cooled cake. Best eaten warm and heavenly.
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