Steamed Banana Cake (No Oven, No Cake-Mixer)

Hello everybody, this is my first post for the year 2013! Happy New Year!

I have disappeared from the radar for some time because I am away (or rather back) in Singapore for a few weeks. These few weeks I have been enjoying mummy's home-cooked food and Singapore's famous hawker food so much so that I rarely have a chance to practise my baking skills, hehe ;p

So when mummy finally allowed me to use her kitchen and her gas-stove to steam a cake (she doesn't have an electric oven by the way), I jumped at the chance and steamed a simple cake that didn't even require a cake-mixer. In fact, I was a bit hesitant initally since the recipe did mention using a cake-mixer to beat the eggs and sugar until pale yellow. But what the heck! You have to improvise when the need arises! 穷则变 变则通!

Since my mum's kitchen was not equipped with all the necessary baking tools (mixing bowl, cake-mixer, not even an egg whisk), so I had to prepare everything with the most rudimentary tools such as folding in flour into the batter, using a rice cooker spoon, in the same little pot which I used to melt the butter, since I couldn't find a big enough bowl to act as a mixing bowl. Luckily I brought my own measuring cups and spoons and bought a small sieve from the local supermart, otherwise I couldn't even measure and sift the ingredients, haha.

Nevertheless, that didn't stop me from producing a nicely steamed cake. It really rose very high, even higher than the same steamed banana cake which I made in Belgium. I wonder could it be the gas-stove that made a difference? By the way, I was using a vitroceramic induction stove in Belgium.

Recipe was adapted from my steamed banana cake recipe, everything was the same, except that 

1) I omitted baking powder and used self-raising flour + 1 tsp baking soda instead.
2) Amount of mashed banana was less than 300g, I used 3 bananas and they were about 250g.
3) The rest of the ingredients were the same, but the steps were a little different from the original recipe. Melt the butter and sugar in a small pot over low fire until sugar dissolves, then set aside for the mixture to cool down a while. Then add in beaten eggs followed by mashed banana and mix well. Finally fold in sifted flour in 3 additions using a spatula. Steam over high heat for 45 to 50 min. 

There is no need to use cake-mixer, and the cake will rise beautifully just like the picture above.  In fact, I just used a metal fork to whisk the eggs, and a rice cooker spoon to fold in the flour. I didn't even have baking paper to line the base of the baking tin, so I just greased the base and sides with a little butter. Luckily the cake popped out easily. Amazing, isn't it? This is definitely a keeper recipe!