Banana and salted caramel cake

Yes banana is healthy, but when combined with copious amounts of butter, sugar and cream, the benefits are most probably cancelled out...

100g soft brown sugar
50g soft brown sugar
150g unsalted butter
250g plain flour
one teaspoon of cinnamon
half a teaspoon of ground ginger (optional)
half a teaspoon of nutmeg (optional)
one and a half teaspoons of baking powder
two eggs, beaten
one vanilla pod
three bananas, mashed
50 ml milk
a dash of orange juice

equal weights of butter and soft brown sugar (I used 100g of each and still had enough to fill a jar size 190g)
coarse sea salt - to taste
double cream

Preheat the oven to 200C and line two 18-20cm cake tins.

Lined tins.

Cream together the butter and sugar.
Deseed the vanilla pod, and add to the butter and sugar.
Gradually beat in the eggs to the butter and sugar - if you do it too quickly, the mixture will curdle and separate.
Add half of the dry ingredients to the mixture and whisk.
Then add all of the milk and orange juice, and whisk.
Once thoroughly combined, add the rest of the dry ingredients.
Add the mashed bananas to the mix and stir together.
Pour into the tins and cook for 30 - 40 minutes.

Cake.



 

Salted caramel sauce.
 



Melt the sugar and butter in a sauce pan over a medium heat.
As soon as they have both fully melted, take off the heat.
Then add the salt and cream, and stir.
Leave aside to cool and thicken.
When lukewarm, drizzle onto the cake.

I topped the cake with extra pieces of cake.

For texture, you could add toasted walnuts to the mixture.

 

Banoffee Pie

Ingredients
2 bananas
397g condensed milk (or dulche du leche)
300g chocolate chip biscuits
35g unsalted butter
200ml double cream
giant chocolate buttons (or just chocolate) These were on special offer so...

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
In a pan on a medium heat, pour in the condensed milk and continuously stir until thickened. This should take about 20 minutes. Even if it looks wrong, continue stirring (and take off the heat).
Bash the chocolate chip biscuits until you have crumbs and stir in the melted butter.
Compress the biscuit-butter combination into a baking tin, and bake in the oven for 10 minutes until the base has hardened. When it has cooked, take out of the oven and leave to cool down.
Slice the bananas into about 1 cm thick.
Pour the cooled caramel onto the biscuit base, cover with chocolate chip buttons and arrange the sliced bananas on top.
Whip the cream into soft peaks and layer onto the banoffee pie.
Sprinkle a few more chocolate buttons on the cream to decorate, and leave in the fridge to chill.

Variations
Orange zest in the cream and caramel, and orange biscuits in the base.
You could melt the chocolate if you wanted to evenly use it.
Using softened icecream instead of cream.
Using custard instead of cream and sponge instead of biscuits to makea banoffee trifle.