Fairtrade Banana cake with peanut butter frosting

So, it's Fairtrade fortnight and as I mentioned in my last post, I decided to enter the #banananut bake-off organised by my friends at Liberation Foods. I'm not taking it too seriously or anything... but the 'creative process' (how fancy) has occupied my mind for the past couple of days! I even spent time yesterday sketching out the decoration of the frosting!

I decided to use my banana bread recipe (because it was so good) but to tweak it a bit and make it a bit 'healthier' by adding pumpkin and sunflower seeds for crunch... and then I came across a peanut butter frosting recipe and decided that would fit perfectly!.... my only problem was that I had run out of my last jar of Harry's Hill's Fairtrade peanut butter... and I didn't think I would find another Fairtrade pot in my village, but luckily, just this morning I had an e-mail from my lovely Traidcraft local contact, Jean, who sets up a stall to promote and sell Fairtrade food and crafts in my village cafe every month or so... reminding me to pop by... and so we did and luckily found a jar of Liberation's Crunchy Peanut Butter! so, all systems go!...The kids had a great time playing with Jean and for me, as always, I was so inspired to meet the incredible people who volunteer so selflessly for our 'cause' and without whom the movement would have never achieved as much as it has to date...

But back to baking... the recipe for the cake is:

Ingredients:
285g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
110g butter
200g Fairtrade caster sugar
2 free-range eggs
4 Fairtrade ripe bananas, mashed
85ml buttermilk (or normal milk mixed with 1½ tsp lemon juice or vinegar)
1 tsp Fairtrade vanilla extract
100 g pumpkin seeds
100g sunflower seeds

And for the frosting:

1 cup of Fairtrade icing sugar

1/4 cup of Fairtrade crunchy peanut butter

1/4 water

1 ts vanilla extract




And for the 'special effects' we bought ready to roll and use icing and with the help of my daughter's play dough set we made super fun cake decorations,,,,

I guess the cake must have know it was made for a good cause, because like Emilia said, it came out smiling!

And so... drum roll.... here is our beautiful creation!

Fairtrade banana cake with a crunchy peanut butter frosting 

Maybe I'm not quite ready to sign up for the great British bake-off yet... but I am very proud of this one and we all had great fun!