A little while ago I bought some bananas from someone in the office raising money for their kid's school. However, I happened to be away on a conference when the bananas arrived, so by the time I came back, they were overripe and not nice to eat any more. D'oh!
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| Bananas! Excuse the dodgy picture on the box, hehe. |
The recipe calls for a large round tin, but I made it in an oblong, as I thought this might make it easier to share at work. I used this fabulous extendable baking tray thingo that I bought on my most recent trip to Germany - love it!
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| Raw dough, cooked cake. |
So, once cooked, I sliced the rectangle in half lengthways...
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| One layer |
... and layered on the icing! I totally, totally love cream cheese icing!
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| Layering the icing |
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| Layered up! |
To fancify things a little, I topped the cake with some salted candied macadamias (recipe from David Lebovitz' Ready for Dessert, and available here on his blog!). They were easy to make, even though I always find hot sugar a bit daunting. All you gotta do for these is to put some sugar, nuts and water into a pan, whack it on high heat, and stir, stir stir until the sugar melts, gets crystally, and then re-melts again into a medium brown caramel. Then you add cinnamon and some salt.
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| Cooking the caramel nuts |
These were incredibly addictive. Crunchy and sweet and salty and faaabulous! Word of warning: Wait for them to cool before you try picking one up! Hot sugar BURNS. (Don't learn this the hard way).
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| Salted candied macadamias |
I only needed a small amount to top the cake, so popped them into a snap-lock bag, and whacked them with a rolling pin the crush them a bit. The remainder got eaten, very quickly.
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| Crush those nuts! |
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| Finished cake |
And from the top... As you can see, I had to slice some off so it would fit in the container. (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!)
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| Cake in container |
I quite liked the cake, but I don't think I'd describe it as the "most fabulous". Texturally it was good, but I found it to be very sweet. I know this is partly my fault, what with the crazy-thick icing and the candied nuts, but the cake itself was really sweet too. And this was after I reduced the quantity of sugar quite significantly from the recipe. You can't really reduce sugar in the icing, as this would affect the texture. Perhaps the cake would work best in a single flat slab, with just a thin layer of icing on the top.
I think for the remainder of the bananas I'll stick to some tried-and-tested recipes, like Nigella Lawson's banana bread (my dad loves it!), or my favourite, Bill Granger's choc-chip banana bread. Although having said that, Nigella does have some tempting banana recipes in Kitchen: banoffee cheesecake, coconut and cherry banana bread, and banana chocolate muffins! And I remember drooling over the insanely decadent banana, chocolate and peanut butter muffins that Panda & Cakes made. Too many options! Hehe, maybe I should just use them in smoothies and stop obsessing over all these recipes!
A little while ago I bought some bananas from someone in the office raising money for their kid's school. However, I happened to be away on a conference when the bananas arrived, so by the time I came back, they were overripe and not nice to eat any more. D'oh!
|
| Bananas! Excuse the dodgy picture on the box, hehe. |
The recipe calls for a large round tin, but I made it in an oblong, as I thought this might make it easier to share at work. I used this fabulous extendable baking tray thingo that I bought on my most recent trip to Germany - love it!
|
| Raw dough, cooked cake. |
So, once cooked, I sliced the rectangle in half lengthways...
|
| One layer |
... and layered on the icing! I totally, totally love cream cheese icing!
|
| Layering the icing |
|
| Layered up! |
To fancify things a little, I topped the cake with some salted candied macadamias (recipe from David Lebovitz' Ready for Dessert, and available here on his blog!). They were easy to make, even though I always find hot sugar a bit daunting. All you gotta do for these is to put some sugar, nuts and water into a pan, whack it on high heat, and stir, stir stir until the sugar melts, gets crystally, and then re-melts again into a medium brown caramel. Then you add cinnamon and some salt.
|
| Cooking the caramel nuts |
These were incredibly addictive. Crunchy and sweet and salty and faaabulous! Word of warning: Wait for them to cool before you try picking one up! Hot sugar BURNS. (Don't learn this the hard way).
|
| Salted candied macadamias |
I only needed a small amount to top the cake, so popped them into a snap-lock bag, and whacked them with a rolling pin the crush them a bit. The remainder got eaten, very quickly.
|
| Crush those nuts! |
|
| Finished cake |
And from the top... As you can see, I had to slice some off so it would fit in the container. (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!)
|
| Cake in container |
I quite liked the cake, but I don't think I'd describe it as the "most fabulous". Texturally it was good, but I found it to be very sweet. I know this is partly my fault, what with the crazy-thick icing and the candied nuts, but the cake itself was really sweet too. And this was after I reduced the quantity of sugar quite significantly from the recipe. You can't really reduce sugar in the icing, as this would affect the texture. Perhaps the cake would work best in a single flat slab, with just a thin layer of icing on the top.
I think for the remainder of the bananas I'll stick to some tried-and-tested recipes, like Nigella Lawson's banana bread (my dad loves it!), or my favourite, Bill Granger's choc-chip banana bread. Although having said that, Nigella does have some tempting banana recipes in Kitchen: banoffee cheesecake, coconut and cherry banana bread, and banana chocolate muffins! And I remember drooling over the insanely decadent banana, chocolate and peanut butter muffins that Panda & Cakes made. Too many options! Hehe, maybe I should just use them in smoothies and stop obsessing over all these recipes!
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