Bananas and cinnamon

Through my work I am lucky enough to meet people from all over the world and many have become close friends. For someone with an insatiable curiosity for anything food related this is very much a bonus and I have had the pleasure of being introduced to many wonderfully exotic recipes, customs and traditions. A number of years ago I was introduced to a Brazilian/Portuguese café hidden in one of the side streets radiating off Seven Dials in Covent Garden. The initial reason for visiting was to introduce me to feijoada, the Brazilian national dish of pork and black beans (delicious) but since that first visit I have been back on numerous occasions to Canela either by myself for a quiet moment of peace or with friends and family (including my mother and two aunts over from Holland in November).

The main reason for my repeated visits (apart from the fantastic coffee, served Portuguese style with a stick of cinnamon) is the most delicious and decadent cake ever. Seriously. I cannot underestimate the gorgeousness of this cake. Dark and sticky layers of cinnamon drenched bananas, sandwiched between oozing layers of sponge (so minimal that at first you think the cake is entirely banana), sprinkled with yet more cinnamon and served with the tiniest Duralex glass of cinnamon dusted cream. This, with a large and bitter black coffee, is my escape from the madness of work on far too rare an occasion.

Inspired and rejuvenated after my last visit (a far better pick-me-up after donating blood than the standard biscuit offering from the NHS) I decided to do a little research and attempt to make this at home. After trawling the web it appears as though this cake’s heritage stems from German immigrants to the south of Brazil (obviously deciding to include the local fruit in their kaffee und kuchen). There seems to be several different takes on making this, one, a type of fruit cake and the other, a version of an upside down cake sounding very like that served at Canela but lacking the cinnamon and many layers of banana. Translating a few of the recipes for the upside down cake and customising the weights and measures to suit my desired outcome everything looked to be going very well. The smells coming from the oven were great and testing with a skewer showed not a slick of mixture but sadly on removing from the tin after 20 minutes cooling, the entire middle of the cake collapsed in a soggy heap! I managed to save the edges and these were actually pretty delicious full of the flavours of banana and cinnamon but lacking the essential stickiness I was after. Oh well, I will persevere and learn from my mistakes but if there are any Brazilians amongst you with a foolproof recipe for bolo de banana then please, please let me know (or maybe the chef from Canela may let me into the trade secret?).

Any way, if you are ever in Covent Garden and want to have something a little different, please do take a trip down Earlham Street and visit Canela, they have a fantastic week day lunch deal at the moment, great service and whilst sitting with a coffee and listening to the friendly chatter in Portuguese, you may be tempted to try that cake……