Culture

It’s that time of year when feijoas are in. I don’t know about you, but every time I gain control over my excess feijoa situation, I seem to acquire more as my friends’ mums try to palm them off on me.

Want to know a secret? This is just a banana cake with some feijoas thrown in.

I didn’t manage to cook myself real food this week — I did make cake though (which I may have had in place of dinner …) Yes, I fail at being an adult too. I would also like to point out that chips and ice cream is a legitimate Saturday night dinner solution.

These cakes are a great way to use up the manky feijoas lurking at the bottom of the fruit drawer. Often I freeze the pulp in snaplock bags for use later in the year as well. You can also use all of those annoying inedible baby feijoas as decoration — that way you use up twice as many!

Ingredients

Makes 18

• 125g butter, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 large eggs
• 1½ cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder
• 2 very ripe large bananas, mashed
• ¾ cup feijoa flesh, mashed

Cream Cheese Icing

• 150g cream cheese, room temperature
• 50g butter, room temperature
• 4–5 cups icing sugar
• juice of 1 lemon
• hot water to loosen if need be baby feijoas to decorate

​Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake and line one and a half muffin trays with paper cases. You could also line a 20cm high-top cake tin if you are that way inclined.
2. Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until pale. Beat in the eggs one at a time and keep beating until voluminous. Sift in the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Mix until just combined. Gently stir in the mashed bananas and feijoas.
3. Scoop into your paper cases until they are only just over half full. Fill as many as you can; if using large muffin pans, you will probably only get 12 from this mix. Bake for 17–23 minutes until a skewer comes out clean but the cakes are still making that sizzling sound when you take them out. If making a large cake, bake for 35–40 minutes (check with a skewer).
4. Leave to fully cool before icing.
5. I am the worst when it comes to icing measurements. Use these quantities for the cream cheese and butter and add as much icing sugar as it takes to make 4–5 cups of fluffy and swirlable icing. Add a splash of hot water to loosen the icing if need be. If making a single cake, halve this icing recipe.
6. Cream together the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add a cup of icing sugar and the juice of the lemon and beat on high. Gradually add the rest of the icing sugar until you get a stiff but still spreadable icing. You still want it to be quite fluffy. Add more lemon juice to taste if you wish.
7. Scoop a couple of tablespoons worth onto each mufffin and, using a hot palette knife, swirl the icing into the desired fashion then place a baby feijoa on the top.