While technically it isn’t from a cookbook, I made a scrapbook of recipes from all the cooking and food magazines. My desert one is complete and my others are in progress. I got really sick of having HEAPS of magazines to move with, when 70% of them were meat or other such recipes that I would never use. So I went through them all with a pair of scissors and an open mind and hacked away. I twas rare I had to choose between two vegetarian recipes on overturned pages so I came out very much on top. And it is much easier carrying around a few notebooks (even if they are heavy) than boxes of cookbooks.
So this recipe is from Delicious Magazine (March 2006).
The ingredients are as follows:
Batter: 1 very ripe banana, mashed; 2 tbs sour cream; 180 g self-raising flour; 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon; 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg; 90g unsalted butter, at room temperature; 180g caster sugar; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 2 eggs; Thick cream or vanilla ice cream, to serve.
Caramel banana topping: 60g unsalted butter; 3/4 cup (120g) lightly packed brown sugar; 1 1/2 tbs golden syrup, plus extra to drizzle (optional); 3-4 Large, just-ripe bananas, sliced on the diagonal.
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a 23-24cm round cake pan. For topping, melt butter over a medium heat, then add sugar and syrup. Cook, Stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes. Pour into pan and tilt to coat base.
Cover with banana slices in overlapping circles.
Combine mashed banana with sour cream. Sift flour, spices and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Beat butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer for 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Add vanilla, then add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture, then sour cream mixture and beat until just combined.
Spread into pan (be careful not to dislodge banana slices).
Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden and springy to touch in center. Stand for 3 minutes, then run a knife around the rim and invert onto a plate. Remove pan after 20 sections, pressing back into cake any banana stuck to pan. Serve warm with cream or ice cream, plus extra syrup if desired.
My notes and what I did differently:
- I used wholemeal self-raising flour. The texture was still light and fluffy and fantastic. I don’t think it changed the recipe all that much.
- The reason that I chose to make this cake was we had 3 bananas on the verge of being thrown out.
- The recipe called for 4-5, with majority being firm, I figured it would look less pretty (tick) but still taste fantastic.
- I also did not have any golden syrup, it’s just not something I keep in my cupboard, so I used 1/2 tbs of blackstrap molasses instead, totally worked.
- The caramel portion either cooking it in the first state or taking it out of the cooked pan is SUPER HOT. Avoid with all body parts.
- The pan I used to put the ingredients in was too small. While it held the end product fine, the caramel totally bubbled and poured over the sides. I was very grateful I had a pan on the bottom of my oven otherwise it would have been a big disaster.
In the end this was a super yummy totally fantastic desert. Served with ice cream warm (again not HOT because that caramel will burn your tongue off!).
