Waste Not Cakes! Carrot & Banana sweetness and pumpkin & mushroom savoury delight

Posted on November 21, 2015 Updated on April 16, 2016

This year our dream team consisting of Green City Events, Cynefin Cardiff and Lia’s Kitchen will be organising more food waste reduction events in Cardiff’s Roath/Penylan, Splott and Adamsdown areas. Our first Love Food Hate Waste Roadshow on 21 November 2015 kicked off a series of roadshows and workshops to follow in 2016. We cannot explain how much we believe in what we do so we hope that our enthusiasm and dedication is contagious. Now is a great time to think about reducing your food waste and to join the fight to help do something about this ever increasing problem.

At our November 2015 roadshow we provided advice and tips on how to use our imagination to cook with what we have at home. Our savoury and sweet cake samples inspired many of you to be creative in the kitchen. So here are the recipes below. Remember don’t be afraid to replace an ingredient you are missing with another. The cake recipes were inspired by ingredients most us of are likely to waste and seasonal, affordable ingredients such as squash.

The sweet cake recipe is based on a similar recipe shared with me by a dear friend Wendy Twell about ten years ago. Whilst the savoury cake is inspired by pumpkin and winter squash which is abundant at the moment – it is designed to help people not waste some of the larger pumpkins/squash they get hold off. For more inspiration on pumpkin see here.

Follow @greencityevens, @liaskitchen, @cynefincardiff for information on upcoming events.

Thanks to www.dangreenphotography.com and Luke From Cynefin for the snaps today.

Sweet Carrot & Banana Cake

Ingredients (8-10 portions)

• 1 carrot coarsely grated
• 2 ripe bananas mashed with a fork
• 100ml/g of fat (vegetable oil or melted butter)
• 250g self-raising flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 150 sugar (caster or light brown sugar or a mix)
• 2 eggs
• 50g chopped nuts of your choice or roughly chopped chocolate
• 1 tsp mixed spices of your choices (we recommend mixing half tsp ground cardamom, half tsp ground cinnamon powder, ¼ tsp ground nutmeg)

Preparation (1.5 hours)

1. Grease and line a 20cm long bread tin or a 20cm round baking tray with flour.
2. Mix the flour with the baking powder and the spices of your choice.
3. Mash the bananas with a fork and grate the carrot in the same bowl.
4. Add the banana and carrot and mix with the flour.
5. Make a well in the middle and add the fat of your choice and eggs.
6. Beat well until blended.
7. Bake in a medium oven (170 centigrade) for 45-1hr or until a skewer pierced into the centre comes out clean.

Lia’s tips:

• If you have one banana only add another carrot. If the mixture is tight add 1-2 tablespoons of milk to make it looser so that the cake is not dry.

• Cool down the butter a little before you add to your mixture. Mix in before adding your eggs.

• The cake keeps well in the fridge for about a week.
• Have too much leftover cake? Why not eat some of it for breakfast with Greek yoghurt and honey. Or soak the drier slices win some coffee and marsala or other sweet wine, topping it with sweetened yoghurt and fruit for an alternative trifle desert which will impress all your guests.

Savoury pumpkin and mushroom cake

Ingredients (8-10 portions)

• 1 small-medium squash/pumpkin or up to 500g peeled squash/pumpkin
• 1 onion
• 300g mushrooms
• 1 small bunch of sage (30g)
• 300g cornmeal or polenta
• 200g plain flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 100g butter melted
• 50-100g cheddar cubed or grated
• 300ml milk
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 30g sugar
• Salt
• Olive oil for frying
• Butter for frying

Preparation (1.5hr)

1. Grease and line a square baking tray (25cm x 35cm) or a deep round baking tray (20-25cm diameter).
2. Cut and peel the pumpkin or squash removing sweet. Then grate coarsely or pulse in a food processor for 2 minutes.
3. Finely slice the onion, mix with the pumpkin, add two pinches of salt and stir fry in a little bit of olive oil for 10 minutes.
4. Slice the mushrooms, add a pinch of salt and fry in a little butter until soft.
5. Fry the whole sage leaves and their chopped stalk in a little butter until crispy.
6. Mix the flours together with the baking powder.
7. Add the sugar, fried veg, the butter, the cheese , the milk and the two beaten eggs and mix into a soft batter that is neither too tight not too runny.
8. Season with more salt if needed and add the fried sage.
9. Bake for 45min-1hr in a medium over (175 centigrade) or until a skewer pierced in the middle comes out clean.

Lia’s tips:

• Raw pumpkin does not in my opinion freeze that well uncooked. Stir frying pumpkin or squash is a great way to preserve it. If you have too much cook it, cool it, freeze it and use in cakes, pies and stir fries later on in the year.
• This recipe is adaptable to various and seasonal ingredients. You can use carrot and greens such as kale and spinach. Or add more mushrooms and less pumpkin. Ingredients such as carrot, pumpkin, courgette, aubergine are good for this cake because the keep this cake moist and soft.
• Same with the cheese- why not use a mix of cheeses, or blue cheese or whatever you might have in your fridge.
• You can replace the milk with yoghurt and a little bit of water.
• If you don’t have sage tarragon is a great alternative and so is rosemary. And of course you can use dried herbs instead of fresh. 1-2 tsp should be enough for this recipe.
• Polenta or fine cornmeal is a great ingredient to store in your pantry. Many shops on or around City road in Cardiff  sell big bags for very little money. It will come handy for many savoury or sweet cakes which you can use your leftovers. Introduce cornmeal to your life – it is a great ingredient to cook with! s
• This cake keeps well in the fridge for about a week. It freezes well too.
• For the summer version of this cake see here.