The Velvet Underground Banana Bread

It was time again to make a birthday cake for a special someone. This particular person shares my love for the coolest band in the world...The Velvet Underground. If you haven't heard of them, please do yourself a favour and pick up a copy of any or all of their albums. I recommend "The Velvet Underground and Nico". The cover features an artwork of a banana by Andy Warhol. As you can see, I tried to recreate this in a cake! I used a cream cheese frosting for the background, which just involved mixing cream cheese and icing sugar. I dyed some store bought marzipan yellow and carefully cut out the exact banana shape by printing out a picture of the album and using it as a makeshift stencil. I then used this fantastic little product that makes decorating so easy; a fudge writer. It's basically chocolate fudge in a tube that you can squeeze out easily. I did to the best of my artistic ability try to emulate Warhol's artwork. Not too shabby if I do say so myself!

Now I knew for a while that I wanted to make a Velvet Underground themed cake but what kind of cake should it be? Then it came to me....forget cake and make banana bread! I got the recipe from my mum's old issue of a Womens Weekly cook book. Since I think the chance of finding a copy of this book is slim, I will share the recipe with you...

Ingredients:

• 125g butter 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups mashed banana
• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tablespoon milk

Method:

1. Grease and line a cake pan. 
2. Combine all ingredients and beat with an electric mixer till combined.
3. Pour mixture into the prepared cake pan.
4. Bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour (I set the oven at 180 degrees Celcius for 35-40 mins because I used a shallow square cake pan instead of a loaf pan. Alternatively, just check by inserting a skewer in the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean...it's done!)

Wait till the banana bread is completely cooled before icing it. Whether you want to go through the trouble of making a Warhol inspired marzipan banana is completely up to you. However, I do encourage you to eat this banana bread while listening to The Velvet Underground and Nico. Trust me, it will be amazing! Na xo

The Velvet Underground and Nico

Photo source