This is Charles Campion's recipe for a really, really gooey banana cake. I know it could do with a photo; I'll try and remember to take/ add one next time I make it! I first made it several months ago and it's so easy and tasty I now make it quite often. It also proved very popular when I took some in for a work cake bake sale (for charity) and I was ordered, in no uncertain terms, to ensure that I made some more for the subsequent sales over the next few weeks!

Best way to describe the texture is to compare it to a chocolate brownie, where there's a layer at the very bottom that's not quite cooked through, it's still doughy and even more moist than the rest, which has cooked through to become proper cake.

If you want to avoid that, I guess you could leave it in the oven longer, but I love that aspect so I always do it exactly like that.

PS Campion says "Because we are looking for a soggy end product, the old-faithful test of sticking in a skewer and withdrawing it clean is not appropriate. With practice you'll simply need to glance at it to tell. In the meantime, because of the style of cake we're trying to achieve, there's a wide margin of error to make things easier."

PPS If it helps, I find the cake rises delightfully and the top turns a lovely rich chocolatey brown (darker than golden brown) and also usually splits, like a lemon drizzle cake. Should have taken a photo but it's all sliced up now, to take into work.

PPS The book is called Fifty Recipes To Stake Your Life On and is one of the few cookery books with no photographs in it that I rate highly.