Torta de platanos (banana cake)

• By Frances Bissell

You will need:

Four slightly under-ripe bananas, 125g of unsalted butter, 250g of unrefined sugar, four eggs, 125g of self-raising flour, two teaspoonfuls of aniseed or fennel seed, whichever you prefer, one teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, a pinch of ground mace, 75g of ground almonds, 75g of raisins.

Put the bananas into a cold oven, then set the heat to gas mark 4/180 C. Leave them in the oven at this temperature for around eight minutes. Remove them from the oven, leave them to cool, then peel them and mash them in a bowl. Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, alternating with the flour sifted with the spices, and the banana. Stir in the almonds and raisins. Spoon the mixture into a buttered and floured 20cm x 30cm baking-tin, and bake it for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave the hot cake in the tin for a few minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool. Then cut it into squares.