Our Pudsey Cake for Children In Need !

We love blogger challenges here at The Madhouse, especially when the whole family can get involved. Well, earlier in the week, we were approached for a new campaign that involved us making a Pudsey Bear dessert (for example Pudsey Bear cupcake, cookies etc), to feature on the BakingMad website on their special Children In Need section (here). They offered to donate £10 to Children In Need charity on my behalf, so how could we say no ? Here's our special Pudsey Banana Bread that we made this afternoon.

The recipe for the basic banana bread is as follows :

Ingredients :

8 tbsp (½ cup) butter

16 tbsp (1 cup) sugar

4 bananas, mashed

2 eggs

24 tbsp (1 ½ cups) flour

1 tsp baking soda (or sachet of raising agent - not needed if using self raising flour)

½ tsp salt (not needed if using salted butter)

½ tsp vanilla (not needed if using vanilla sugar)

In advance : Take butter out of fridge for a while so it’s easier to cream.

1) Preheat oven to 350°F/180. Grease and flour a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan.

2) In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the bananas and eggs. Combine well.

3) Stir in the flour, raising agent/baking soda and salt/vanilla if needed.

4) Pour into loaf tin and bake for about 60 minutes.

Variations :

Add a little rum and some raisins.

We make this at least once a month as it's a great way of using up banans that are turning black in the fruit bowl faster than anyone's eating them !

In one bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

In a separate bowl, mash the bananas. Mix the eggs into the butter and sugar, then the flour and finally the banans.

For our Pudsey cake, I made a smaller cake than usual and two muffins for the ears.

The kids then got busy with some ready-to-roll icing, strawberry buttons and black designer icing to transform it into a cute Pudsey face. We were very impressed with the final result. What do you think ?!!

For more cake recipes and baking advice advice, head over to http://www.bakingmad.com/

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

Silver Spoon Create Cake Decorating products review

Pudsey and his Beary Best Friend… Blush Bear Return to Build-A-Bear Workshop

Antony Worrall Thompson's Pudsey Pud recipe for Children in Need 2010