Banoffee Cake

 

It’s my Grandad’s 65^th birthday today, so we had a big family BBQ last night to celebrate. After a lot of umming and ahhing, I decided to try making a banoffee cake for his birthday cake and I’m glad I did, because everyone loved it! The whole thing was demolished within about 10 minutes, even after everyone said that they were too full on BBQ food to eat anything else! So, of course, I had to share the recipe!

Ingredients:

For the sponge:

250g unsalted butter

225g demerara sugar

4 eggs

Few drops vanilla essence

250g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 medium ripe bananas, mashed

120ml buttermilk

For the filling and topping:

300ml double cream

2 medium bananas, sliced

Squeeze of lemon juice

1 can of caramel

Pre-heat your oven to 180c and grease/line two loose bottomed cake tins.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and give it a good mix.

Next, sift in the self raising flour and baking powder and fold it into the mixture. Then lastly, add the mashed banana and buttermilk and mix until well combined.

Divide the cake mix evenly between the two tins and use a spoon to spread it up to the edges, leaving the tops as level as possible.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until lightly golden, springy to the touch, and a skewer inserted into the middle of the sponges comes out clean.

Turn the sponges out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely. Once cool, you can assemble the cake.

In a mixing bowl, whisk the cream until it’s thick enough to spread – you should be able to hold the bowl upside down and it should stay put, but don’t over whisk it as it will curdle!

Place one layer of the sponge onto your serving plate/stand, and spread about half the tin of caramel over the sponge.

Coat the banana slices in the lemon juice, just to stop them browning, and layer these over the top.

Next, carefully spoon the thick cream over the top of the bananas and spread out into an even layer.

Place the other half of the sponge on top of the cream, and spread the remaining caramel on top.

And that’s it! As it contains fresh cream and fruit, its best eaten on the day it’s baked, but will probably keep for another day or two if kept covered in the fridge.